Teaching as a Human Experience : An Anthology of Contemporary Poems [1 ed.] 9781443883276, 9781443876551

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Teaching as a Human Experience

Contemporary Teaching and Learning Poetry Series Series Editor: Patrick Blessinger

Teaching as a Human Experience: An Anthology of Contemporary Poems Edited by

Karen J. Head and Patrick Blessinger

Teaching as a Human Experience: An Anthology of Contemporary Poems Edited by Karen J. Head and Patrick Blessinger This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Karen J. Head, Patrick Blessinger and contributors

 https://www.hetl.org/

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7655-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7655-1

THIS

VOLUME OF POETRY IS DEDICATED TO EDUCATORS ALL OVER THE WORLD AND TO THE MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION TEACHING AND LEARNING ASSOCIATION WHOSE CREATIVE PASSION FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING IS HELPING TO TRANSFORM THE FIELD OF EDUCATION IN MANY POSITIVE WAYS.

CONTENTS

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS .............................................................................. ix SERIES EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION .............................................................. xiii VOLUME EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION ............................................................ xv POEMS .......................................................................................................... 1 ABOUT THE AUTHORS .............................................................................. 163 AUTHOR INDEX ........................................................................................ 185 TITLE INDEX ............................................................................................. 187

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Sandra Alcosser

James Curran

Laura Apol

Chad Davidson

Andrew Bailes

Robert H. Deluty

Luci Gorell Barnes

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi

Susan Cherie Beam

Jonathan Porter Eastman

Brian Beatty

Donna M. Elkins

Dennis Ken Bideshi

Nathan Elliot

Amanda M. Bigler

Meg Eubank

Patrick Blessinger

Steve Evans

William (Bill) Edgar Boyd

Roberta Fabiani

Eva Wennås Brante

Sandy Feinstein

Matt Bryden

Beverly Fenig

Lori B. Caress

Gregory Fraser

John Casquarelli

Alice Friman

Dadi Chen

Alice B. Fogel

Paula Marie Coomer

Louis Gallo

Marie Cook

Frani Geiger

Maria Dolores Costa

Terry Gifford

Barbara Cozza

David Gordon Goddard

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List of Contributors

Norma Walrath Goldstein

Erica Vernold Miller

Richard K. Gordon

Shannon Morreira

Alisa Gordaneer

Laura Morrison

Eimile Máiréad Green

Charmayne Mulligan

Sinead Hahessy

Rich Murphy

Elaine Handley

Mark O’Hara

Erik G. Hemming Danielle Izzo Murray Jennings Gunhild Jensen Hershman John Rae Desmond Jones

Kate Oxley Sylvia Petter Robyn Philip Philip Porter Annette Priesman Patricia C. Robinson

Angela Masterson Jones Christopher (Kit) Kelen

Kabini Sanga

Jennifer Lagier

Martin T Sedgley

Ronna J Levy

Noel Sloboda

Ashley Lister

Kathryn Sutherland

Michael Kgomotso Masemola Jill Marie McSweeney Peter Meinke Jim Mello Lucy Michael

Peter Charles Taylor Mimi Thebo P. L. Thomas N. N. Trakakis Danielle Valenilla Elizabeth VanDeusen-MacLeod

Teaching as a Human Experience

David K. Weiser

Robert Edward Witmer

Roel Wijland

Daniel Xerri

Jennifer Wilson

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SERIES EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

What is an anthology? Broadly defined, an anthology is a collection of writings, such as poems or short stories or other creative works, centered on a similar theme or topic or time period, with contributions from different/various authors. The theme and requirements for the anthology are determined by the anthology editor(s). The works are chosen by the anthology editor(s) and the editors are responsible for compiling the entire volume. The editors typically publish some of their own works alongside the contributors’ works. The works that appear in the anthology may include both previously published works and original unpublished works. An anthology is a good format to showcase both established writers and new writers. The purpose of the HETL Anthology Series is to use the medium and craft of poetry and creative prose to explore teaching and learning as a human experience. This series will provide educators with an artistic and literary medium for expressing their individual and shared experiences as educators. It will provide many windows and doors into the varied perspectives, thoughts, and feelings of educators from around the world. It seeks to showcase the creative use of language and writing and how language and writing can be used as vehicles for inquiry, creative selfexpression, professional development, and personal empowerment and agency. Viewing teaching and learning from the lens of poetry and creative prose provides a novel way to engage teachers and students more deeply in the teaching-learning process. A such, the focus of this series will be to use creative writing as an artistic means to express and describe those aspects of teaching and learning that are most meaningful and life transforming. This series will include several volumes that will showcase all types of poetry (e.g., free verse, blank verse, rhyme) and short creative prose (e.g., lyric essays, prose poems, short creative nonfiction). The volumes in this series can also serve as textbooks for college courses in poetry and creative writing as well as supplemental readings for courses in instructional leadership, teacher preparation, and the like in schools of education.

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Series Editor’s Introduction

What is poetry and why is it, and this anthology series, important? Poetry is a literary art form that uses the aesthetic qualities of language to express the full depth and breadth of human experience in personally meaningful ways. Poetry is a type of subjective interpretive process used to better understand and convey the full depth and breadth of the human experience. Poetry is a multidimensional form of language and artistic expression concerned with the full range of human experiences. Poetry uses the pen (or keyboard) as its brush, ink (or pixels) as its paint, and paper (or screen) as its canvas. The writer thus makes creative use of language (the play of words and their many multi-layered meanings) to paint a unique and rich depiction of life and to express the manifold aspects of human experience in unique and meaningful ways. For example, poetry (and creative prose) uses such literary devices as metaphor, simile, allusion, analogy, personification, sound, form, repetition, rhythm, irony, symbolism, paradox, and imagery to express the deeper meanings of human experiences. Poetry draws on these devices, and many more, to help convey the full depth and breadth of human experiences. Poetry not only deepens our understanding of what it means to be human but it also aims to more deeply engage our intellect, emotions, and imagination, all at the same time. Poetry can help educators and students and others move towards a deeper awareness of and appreciation for experiential knowledge, which in turn, can foster more effective and meaningful teaching and learning experiences. This series also welcomes literary forms and subgenres of creative prose that are closely aligned with poetry (e.g., lyric essays – poetic essays, prose poems, short creative nonfiction). These forms allow the writer to intersect and merge elements and techniques of the more commonplace genres of standard poetry and creative prose. This series also welcomes experimental forms of creative writing that seek to express and interpret the manifold meanings of the human experience by creatively mixing, synthesizing, re-purposing, integrating, and dancing with the various elements and techniques of different genres in innovative and meaningful ways. Patrick Blessinger International HETL Association and St. John’s University (NYC)

VOLUME EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

Poetry, according to Aristotle, is a made thing. Poetry is architectural; this is why it takes on so many varied forms. Poetry also has a performance quality when it is spoken aloud, either by the poet or by someone else. Teaching also has a sense of architecture. Preparation requires construction of lesson plans, or in some situations, the ability to inspect the viability of a lesson plan. Teaching is also a performance. Poetry and teaching have much in common. Teaching itself could be called a kind of poetry, speaking the broadest sense of poetry, as in poetry in motion. Poetry also affords people the opportunity to use metaphor to define things that are abstract. No doubt this is why there is so much love poetry. It should come as no surprise, then, that teachers might turn to poetry to try to give meaning to the work they do. While some of what we experience as teachers is fairly straightforward, much of what we must address with our students, if we are trying to be the best teachers, requires a variety of approaches. The notion of “teaching,” not unlike concepts such as Truth or Beauty, is hard to explain. Even harder to explain are the interactions we have with our students—the interactions that require much more from us than simply providing a grade on an assignment. Providing a poetic outlet to explore some of the complexities of teaching was the impetus for this anthology. Many of the teachers present in these pages do not identify as poets, more they expressed their sense of being “students of poetry.” Others are wellestablished poets whose work has appeared in many of the best literary journals. Whatever their backgrounds, they share two common goals: to be exceptional teachers and to never cease being learners themselves.

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Volume Editors’ Introduction

The collection represents a variety of experiences from many different countries and cultures. Some of these experiences will seem particularly familiar, or as Lori Caress writes in “An Uncommon Lens:” Each day opens a tall white canvas on towering wood frames, and I brush back the lashes of motherless girls, tack down the legs of wandering boys, as an architect lays girders for a magnificent construct. Other poems will be difficult for some of us to comprehend. For example in Robyn Philip’s “Absent on Manus Island” where we encounter a teacher’s horror at a detention camp in Papua New Guinea; the speaker describes the death of one of the refugees: “we didn’t talk about him at breakfast / we didn’t discuss him in the morning seminar / I didn’t add his name to the role.” Most readers will sense the beauty and the challenge in both the mundane and the extraordinary. In Laura Apol’s “Dragon Dance,” we find both qualities in a poem about Chinese girls left behind by parents who have gone to the cities for work: In the hallways, the girls are small and unsmiling. They pause for the cameras, hair neat, uniforms pressed, a red kerchief knotted at every neck. Behind their eyes, home waves it banner, distant as a kite— until the dragon dance begins, and they shed their serious skin, Many of the teachers are responding to the idea of themselves as teachers —a person who can seem like a kind of other, a persona, even a ghost. The exploration of moving between private self and the public “teacher” self can be strange, or as Roel Wijland writes in “In the Quadrangle Theatre,”

Teaching as a Human Experience

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Autonomously, their testudo formation becomes a single Roman shield becomes a blur becomes a space only in my head that I can’t ever seem to remember. I notice being me when I clear my throat. Overall this anthology represents a diverse group of teacher-poets from over 80 institutions in 16 countries. It is a collection you can read in starts and stops (not unlike a daily devotional), but it will likely keep you longer than you expect. I want to thank the teacher-poets for sharing their work, their experiences, their messages with me, with all of us. It is a wonderful thing to see so many people fully engaged in the practice of the two arts I value above all others: teaching and poetry. Both art forms require constant revision and practice. Ultimately, I hope you find solace and inspiration in the images and the ideas that will surely resonate with and become part of you. I also hope you will share it with fellow teachers. Even more, I hope you will share it with your students—it is the students who remain at the heart of Teaching as a Human Experience. Karen J. Head Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA The poems in this collection deal with the real life-worlds of professors, instructors, lecturers, teachers, and others working in education. This volume covers contemporary teaching experiences in education, including the many roles that teachers play such as instructing, lecturing, mentoring, facilitating, coaching, guiding, leading, etc. The role and process of teaching embodies and involves many varied psycho-social interactions (e.g., teacher-self, teacher-student, teacher-teacher, teacher-administrator, teacher-parent, and teacher-community). As such, teaching provides a context for meaningful personal and professional relationships across the full range of human experiences. This volume covers the manifold life

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Volume Editors’ Introduction

experiences and perspectives of being and working as a teacher in education and the epiphanies (i.e., experiences of deep realization) experienced in that role. As such, this volume gives creative voice to the full range of experiences by teachers, students, and others. It seeks to empower readers with inspiration and personal agency as they evolve as self-creating, selfdetermining authors of their own lives, both personally and professionally. In short, this volume seeks to expand our consciousness of what it means to be a teacher in contemporary life and within diverse learning environments and cultures. The poems are largely based on teachers’ meaningful experiences in and out of the classroom and will provide artistic inspiration and creative insight to others who currently work as teachers or those students who are preparing to be professors, instructors, and teachers or those students who simply enjoy the creative voice of others. Patrick Blessinger International HETL Association and St. John’s University

POEMS

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PAPERS SANDRA ALCOSSER

On the great estate my Great Aunt said stay until you grade Those papers. One girl exclaimed She loved Sham pain. On hands and knees The maid asked how’s teaching? Fine, if not for papers. That’s why I quit said the maid Testing polish on slick parquet. From his death bed, to ease The family, Gerard Manley Hopkins said at least There will be no more student papers to read. And then I am so happy. I am so happy. I am so happy.

Teaching as a Human Experience

VOODOO, CENTRAL PARK1 SANDRA ALCOSSER

There is a pig's head hanging from a sycamore in Harlem Meer, a woman's earring knotted in human hair placed within a circle of rice grains, and as we follow Montayne's Rivulet toward l04th Street we find a rabbit with a knife in its breast. Its rotting flesh smells like thick ink. I ask the children to study an oak tree with Fistulina hepatica growing at its base, but they will not come near me. The fungus is deep red and they swear the tree is bleeding.

1 This poem was previously published in A Fish to Feed All Hunger, Ahsahta Press.

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DRAGON DANCE LAURA APOL

1. At night we cross the river in the dark, the next day we meet the river in the rain: Yangtze—Golden Waterway, path of winding dreams. We leave its wide banks to drive into the mountains, climb the steep roads —through the countryside, terraced rice fields, garden plots with bamboo trellises training vines of beans and peas; —through the village, open-air shops selling vegetables and fruit, trussed chickens and slabs of pork spread on plastic tables in the streets.

2. This is the journey the children make up the mountain each Monday morning; this is the journey the children make down the mountain each Friday afternoon. In between, they sleep on rows of bunks in rows of rooms, hang towels on rows of hooks. The windows, crossed by metal bars, open onto distant valleys, misty skies.

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This is the village school, home to left-behind children* who each morning fold their blankets into neat squares on the end of the bed, wait in a double line to brush their teeth. This is the dragon school, home to four bright creatures on the hill keeping watch, sparkling Ss in the grass overlooking the playgrounds and dorms— grinning sentries with fiery tails.

3. In the hallways, the girls are small, unsmiling. They pause for the cameras, hair neat, uniforms pressed, a red kerchief knotted at every neck. Behind their eyes, home waves its banner, distant as a kite— until the dragon dance begins, and they shed their serious skin, birth themselves, their good-luck held aloft— a small wood bench transformed by yellow silk, its spine crisscrossed in red, face bright foil and scarlet net. There are four, there are six, there are eight dragon girls engaged in the dance, raising the dragon bench high, swinging it low, moving over and under, under and through— dragon daughters who stop time with their intricate steps.

*

“Left-behind children” is a term used to describe children who remain behind when their parents leave rural areas to work in the city in the hope of providing the family a better life.

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They invite us to join. We link hands, lift over, bend into, step toward. Then the bench is once more a bench, the yellow cloth set aside, the left-behind girls returned to their everyday lives.

4. We, too, move in reverse: past the shops and stone steps of the village, past the narrow houses, beanpoles, chickens scratching in the mud, follow the road, slick with rain, down to the winding waters of the Yangtze as the golden river leaves the mountains, the village, the school— travels east to the city, makes its serpentine way to the sea.

Teaching as a Human Experience

LOTUS LAURA APOL

I love the lotus because while growing from mud, it is unstained. —Zhou Dunyi The rain is falling on Chongqing, one-and-two-andon the Yangtze River and the mountain forests, the bamboo, the ginkgo and mulberry leaves; on rice fields that line the river’s path. It has been falling for three thousand years, ancient calligraphy on the scroll of the earth: brush, stone, paper and ink. The rain is falling on Chongqing, three-and-four-andon the Beibei Special School, on the Beibei Special children— soaked backpacks, damp uniforms and sodden shoes. Umbrellas, open, line the hall outside the Lotus classroom door. Orchid, lily, peony, poppy— here the always-labelled children are named for flowers they may never see or touch or smell, gathered at their desks, yellow and red bouquets. For the Lotus class, the rain falls to the beat of a lesson on rhythm, one-and-two-andLotus children clapping, counting, keeping time, out of time. three-and-four-and-

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Stamping together, they chant the verse: The sun is high up in the sky. The flowers are smiling. The birds are singing, Good morning, why do you have your schoolbag on your back? Stamping together, they chant the response: I’m going to school. I’m never late for school. I love going to school, and I’m always working hard. The rain is falling on the pond outside the Beibei Special School— the pond clustered with blossoms that bob on the surface in the rain—fill, empty, fill once more. one-and-two-and-three-and-four. The rain has been falling, the Beibei Special children have been chanting, and the lotus blossoms have filled and emptied. Three thousand years.

Teaching as a Human Experience

RECITATION LAURA APOL

Most of the second-graders in the English language class have never left Beijing. This is home, the world they know. The rest is the world they may someday see. Today’s lesson is Australia. The teacher says it first and they repeat: Australia Australia Australia Australia Forty second-graders shape their mouths around this strange word. Taste it: Australia. Forty second-graders read the dialogue in the book. Underline the useful phrases, the teacher says and forty second-graders pick up their rulers and position them on the page. They make their travel plans as one, book the same tickets in their minds: I like Australia I like Australia One day I will go there One day I will go there They have passports in the names of Annie, Peter, Tony, Lily and Joy. They have visas in the names of Gary, Mike, Beauty, Windy and Paul. They are partnered for the trip, seated side-by-side at their double desks. Like old couples, their dialogue smoothed by use: What language do they speak in Australia? Australian people speak English. Why do you want to go to Australia? Because I love Australian animals.

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What animals live in Australia? Koalas and kangaroos live there. Why do you love kangaroos and koalas? Because they are very very cute. Their declarations go on and on. The teacher asks the room: Do you like Australia? and in unison they shout, Yes! Do you want to go there? and in unison they shout, Yes! Do you love the animals? and in unison they shout, Yes! Then the bell rings, and they reclaim their Beijing lives and names: Wen, Ni, Ying, Xue Li, Feng, Ming, Yong. They pack their rulers into cases on their desks, wave from the doorway and, with one voice, shout Good-bye!

Teaching as a Human Experience

EXAM ROOM ANDREW BAILES

eyes rise like surfacing swimmers for the clock, for air for an idea, there above the whiteboard shimmers the ghost of a thought caught, as in a summer’s afternoon shuffling papers, dusty room - it was taught.

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SHE GOES TO PRAY LUCI GORELL BARNES

The first week I lay out crayons and paper. The other women grab them, but she sits still. Her left forearm has a latticework of scars (It’s the right forearm if you’re left-handed). I slide a sheet of paper towards her, ‘I can’t draw,’ she says. Her thin brown hand touches one of the craters on her cheek That looks like it was made with a cigarette. At 3 o’clock, she goes to pray. The next week I bring the beautiful paper my sister brought back from Japan, Spread it out in a fan. The window bars throw striped shadows across the battered table. The other women make cards to send their children. At 3 o’clock, she goes to pray. The next week I bring a small box of printing blocks. She lifts the lid and closes it again Almost immediately. At 3 o’clock, she goes to pray. The next week She opens the box and picks out a tree. I slip her some paper, and she makes a single print on it. At 3 o’clock, she goes to pray. She returns and presses a flower block into the inkpad. Press, paper, press, pad, press, paper, press, pad, press, paper… Until there is a blanket of flowers under her tree.

Teaching as a Human Experience

The next week She prints birds in the branches. At 3 o’clock, she goes to pray. She returns, and pushes her paper aside. The next week I hand her the picture. She picks up a pencil and draws clouds above the tree, Then rain. I sit by her and we look at her drawing. ‘You can draw,’ I say, Turning towards her. Then I see there is a perfect crescent moon shape Missing from her right ear Where someone has bitten straight through it, Like an apple.

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FOR ALL THE DARREN’S IN THE WORLD SUSAN CHERIE BEAM

He looks at me wonderingly and says, “Past classes, they told me, ‘write like I talk.’” And I….I cringe inside at this barrier. I must ask: Why not let him roam free in the playground of language? Teach him about the richness of context, audience, idioms, tongues, and jargon. Make room for the “Hello, Sir,” and “Good afternoon, Ma’am,” And even the “Hey bae” or “Yo boo.” Let him wallow in the messy puddles of dialects, Swing on accents, Slide on a variety of vernaculars, And, while dreaming under a tree, build air castles of linguistic constructions in the sky.

Words, like love, should exist in abundance.

Teaching as a Human Experience

RUBBING ALCOHOL BRIAN BEATTY

That last day our high school psychology teacher staggering a little told class about when everybody was our age and dying at war. More or less. Girls back home had to confess their beautifully filthy desires in pious love letter code which he went on to crack for us in graphic detail for the next half-hour. Guys in battle poured pails of rubbing alcohol or mouthwash through Army company-length loaves of white bread they stole if they wanted to stave off their real wounds: loneliness and fear. How that worked he remembered for us as well. “We experimented. Kept notes. Like cowards.”

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Ghosts made themselves known soon enough loud as bombs or church bells in the ears of many of the unlucky survivors. We would hear them clanging everywhere if we knew how to listen. To decipher not just what, but why. His lecture ended with our teacher perched atop a four-drawer filing cabinet in the corner, trying to pull out his beard as if tearing grass from around a grave. Kids today have no idea, he said. Or enemy.

Teaching as a Human Experience

A NOTE TO YOU, MY STUDENT DENNIS KEN BIDESHI

Let your dreams surprise even your imagination Let your fears conquer even the mighty in your circle Let your irrational thoughts shake the foundations of reason And on occasions, dare to be an exception to the rule And sometimes, carelessly do leave deep footprints for others to follow in the storm And if you dare, occasionally, backtrack and erase them, but not in spite For in doing so, you let others discover the path on their own But in all, share your knowledge, faith, love and compassion Especially with those so less inclined For these, my student, should be the most infectious part of your character They are the indelible memories you leave behind, Indeed, they are the monuments of your existence

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THE ABACUS AND THE ALPHABET AMANDA M. BIGLER

Your so nauseous with you're pi (or phi?) just squiggles of there peeks, their roots, they're imaginary... 'i's ITS SIMPLE, the curve of the bell and who the hell cares about dangling participles, equations unsolved? 3 POINT 1 4 and it goes on and on and on for a sideways 8. And ain't math hard!? Rules written. Rulers made. A squared + B squared = C squared.

Teaching as a Human Experience

But only from the

r i g h t angle

And I comes before E... accept it after C. Unless an exception; a field of imaginary -negative

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AN ODE TO TEACHERS PATRICK BLESSINGER

What to make of these seekers of truth These admirers of Confucius and Goethe What to make of these explorers of knowledge These admirers of Whitman and Joyce They revere Shakespeare with great admiration His Hamlet more captivating than any drama They hold Beethoven in such high regard His Ninth more stirring than any score What to make of these originators of ideas Who esteem the wisdom of Da Vinci and Dewey What to make of these dreamers of justice Who admire the ideals of Mandella and King They light the way for the curious student They celebrate the journey of learning and life They instruct and guide and open the mind To a world filled with discovery and light

Teaching as a Human Experience

TATTERED SHOES PATRICK BLESSINGER

In my growing up, they were a sign of my poverty – tattered brown shoes three sizes too big for my feet Bought when I turned six, they were meant to last all through primary school Scuffed and thin heeled from boyhood deeds and dirt roads, those tattered shoes carried me to and from school each day And they tenderly cradled my feet like the loving hands of my mother

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AN ODE TO EMILY DICKINSON PATRICK BLESSINGER

The words you wrote in Amherstland, their warmth surpass a summer’s day they exceed the efforts of my hand to express the words I long to say Though my words lack your grace and the beauty of your mind pardon my attempt to trace the poesy my heart tries to find From your room you saw the world though you rarely left your home letting all your thoughts unfurl your unfettered words free to roam Emily, you say, “I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?” But I say, How wonderful it would be to view the world as Emily

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NOTEBOOK TSUNAMI: UNSETTLING THE TEACHING EXPERIENCE2 WILLIAM (BILL) EDGAR BOYD

The waves just skimmed the surface But the undertow is still churning Ripping undercurrents alive and dangerous The houses the gardens the schools the temples All skimmed away In an instant Clean removed the obvious removal Invisibility The living minds Dragged under Still rattling their broken families traumas futures Churning struggling against the blackwater undertows My wave flyingvisit wave equally skimming Drags my mind undertowing to confusion What can be done? What can I do? If I despair what can I do When on the surface survivors surfacesmile And talk and live and surface survive I know I think I know The turmoil they live with Or sense at least the ripples of their undertowsundercurrents Daily knowing ghosts everpresent everconstant Reminders living and dead Strengthened by being alive Driven to action if not madness 2

The extended essay was originally published as: Boyd, B. 2005. Tsunami Coast: May 2005: Sri Lanka. Pp.3-13 in Bouncing off Walls. Alstonville: Bill Boyd. The poem was posted as a tribute to the victims of the tsunami, in 2005, as Tsunami Blackwater: Visiting Sri Lanka, at http://www.fullmoonfamily.com/relief.html

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So I cannot despair or I will be the Madwoman No son no house no land no future Ranting against the wind Consoled by the Coordinator No son no house no land a future Who hires the Brickwomen handclearing Bricks walking miles dumping tidying Forever smiling laughing never forgetting Clearing preparing building for those lost So I cannot despair My pen notebook feeble words Pale reflections of the undertows deep pools of destruction Maybetools of help My notebook dot points Scribbled through misty eyes Perhaps Bring the Madwoman Coordinator Brickwomen closer And we can touch them Dot point one: broken boats Should-be-floating boats Should-be-fishing boats Scattered over fields, neatly piled at roadsides Hiding up trees Waiting for a new world Where shattered boats can smile at the sea again Dot point two: broken houses Abandoned houses Lived-in-again houses Dismantled houses Partly-rebuiltrepaired houses Broken windows doors gaping drawing in sunlight To flush out the ghosts of the blackwater Deadhouses livingmemoryhouses Dot point three: relieftents sheltertents Flapping hanging on the wastedland Someotherworld charity instantmoment charity Canvases of hope

Teaching as a Human Experience

Styles donors decided anonymous to the unwilling residents Homes where there are none Dot point four: drains creeks rivers Filled-up drains creeks rivers fillingsand Unwanted-sand-filled-up drains creeks rivers Replacing water wantedwater now-invisiblewater Dot point five: debris debris debris Now gathering seaward hopeful landfill Protecting against the blackwater-future-blackwater Or building new building land Or scattered too tired to be collected Chance reminders to stub the unwary toe Dot point six: edges of destruction deceptively sharp Cutting the lives of everyone we meet So I cannot despair For though I know the edges of destruction will always cut The blackwater will never be forgotten I am sure With-help The boats will smile on the sea again The houses sing with families The flapping donor tents will blow away Or become normal-life marquees boat stores sunshades Or simply rot in tropical inevitability And the debris will overgrow foundation make seawall protect Easing the madness Smoothing the undertows Making new homes

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Notes Data is only as good as the primary record of observation. This we instruct our students … nothing is better than the first record in your notebook. Field observation is crucial. This we instruct our students. Nothing is better than direct observation. This we have learned ... So what happens when our notebook lets us down? What happens when our fieldwork is inadequate? What happens …? In May 2005, I visited a coastline hit by the Boxing Day tsunami. Sweeping across the Indian Ocean, it destroyed tropical innocence in moments. The coastline is the southern coast of Sri Lanka. I visited villages and towns, drove along broken roads, looked, talked and listened. All this in all-too-short time. I thought I would simply record the recovery of a damaged coastline – a geography activity for a geography teacher. I had previously studied a recovering landscape and people after the 1995 Rabaul volcanic eruptions. I was unprepared for the trauma ... My notebooks filled with observations. Data is only as good as the primary record of observation … Nothing is better than direct observation … I saw and heard so much. At least I could share the experience, raise awareness. The damage, the trauma, the confusion, the anxiety, all forced a redefinition. My experience was not of a geography teacher making notes, doing fieldwork. My geography mask slipped. Questions, questions, questions. What is normal? How do normality and survival relate? How could such a beautiful place and people be damaged so badly? What should we take for granted? … I wrote poems. My notebooks had failed me. My observations trascended academic prose. What am I to now say to my students? The final chapter of an extended poetic essay attempts an answer …

Teaching as a Human Experience

MY MISSION EVA WENNÅS BRANTE

I had a dream, I had a vision. My mom was a teacher and I had the feeling she was always there For me, For my future children. I didn’t become a volunteer, I became a teacher. My mission – to do the best lessons… Ever. Stayed up all night to plan; Gave me energy. Time passed, And time spent on conflicts too. Motivating teenagers; Motivate, motivate, motivate, motivate. Disappointment. I try, but I don’t reach everyone. Reality; My dream world. No experience, Yet drowning in experiences. I loved to have long talks with the students. I loved the relationships; each student a person. I was proud of my ability to connect. Then I became a mother, Coming home empty and tired; Exploding.

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God, I am not the mother my mother was! Preparing lessons about the French revolution. Again. Couldn’t motivate myself. These late nights of planning; For what? I need to be fulfilled, Give, give, give, Give me something back! I was no longer a happy person, not a happy wife, not a happy mother; I just was. I needed something else. I HAVE to have something else! I am longing for an office; Not fearing to open a door I am longing for silence and peaceful coffee breaks. So… I quit. And I have had my Sundays back! Yet, I miss the relationships, I miss the students, I miss the dynamics in the classroom. I miss the feeling when everything clicked and The pride I felt In being a teacher.

Teaching as a Human Experience

THE EXAMPLE MATT BRYDEN

I haven't told a soul, but since Hidemi's disclosure she looks a little different – like her hair has been rinsed this morning and left to fall forward over her eyes. I feel a little guilty as though implicit in my knowledge were a design. Little does she know I would no more take her in my arms now than before. Hidemi bounces on the trampoline, her high voice coming through the library window. If I were light like that, voice stretched, extended and sounding each bounce – I would clap a covering hand, slide my feeling into a shirtpocket, return to my usual gait, head down. I crane my neck towards her voice. This poem was previously published in, Smiths Knoll

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EXAM CONDITIONS MATT BRYDEN

My authority only extends to the administration of these papers. I hold the two doors closed through force of will. To get the students to jump through these hoops I think of the iceberg in the water, the cheque deposited in my current account. Some naturally draw attention to themselves like birds – their phones ring, they try on a jacket, open their wallets to put away a card. Just when I'm about to speak, they leave, indicating the answer books on their desks. A raised hand sends ripples through the room. A student asks to take a phone call, vibrations running through her fingers, and I nod at the courtesy. Sounds seep through the open door, and I feel the warmth slip out. I am alert to the precedent. A girl in the front row in trim white sweater and tidy flares catches my eye, follows my movements as I aid her classmate, her paper filled with looped black writing.

Teaching as a Human Experience

The sound of mounted police passes the window. A student regards me, answer book closed in front of him. I watch the ever-widening exits.

This poem was previously published in, New Welsh Review.

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AN UNCOMMON LENS LORI B. CARESS

Hands splattered on paper like immaculate blueprints, voices sprinkling the air like rosewater, and I sit in the center of their universe a lily in the midst of a thousand dancing petals, a curator of dreams, a receptacle for tiny templates. Each day opens a tall white canvas on towering wood frames, and I brush back the lashes of motherless girls, tack down the legs of wandering boys, as an architect lays girders for a magnificent construct. For they connect us these small microcosms of endless carbon resurrect us in the cycle of life and death these pale metaphors of our perceived immortality, these indelible stars.

Teaching as a Human Experience

DEVELOP THE ALBATROSS IN YOUR STORY

JOHN CASQUARELLI

unwrap the vowel the moment ahead listen to the restless bamboo night song the deep blue between raindrops from dancer to image weaver to student alchemist a paper about a long journey home somewhere beyond the limitations of geography a chance to fly over mountains polished defined aware past our collected delusions brush strokes the painter’s autumn on Google Docs and Blackboard journal entry about the impermanence of an ideal a long silence staring at the window in the meadow minds made of liquid and air change and form with every page in a Henry Miller novel

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shake dust from shoes stumble in circles stand up live your contradictions be and be again

Poems

Teaching as a Human Experience

TO THE 110TH ANNIVERSARY OF XI’AN JIAOTONG UNIVERSITY DADI CHEN

Why am I mean and arrogant? Because of what I dedicated and experienced. Because I’ve seen more talents than stars, More brave Hearts than leaves of the Grass. My shoulders were covered by more prints Of taps of great Hands than grains of Sand. I expedited the birth of a new country With clanking hammers, gears and lathes. I disposed of people’s illusions and ignorance, And bestowed them freedom and colorful dreams With unwavering faith, I roared from east to west, Liberating all flesh from misery and poverty. Old as a man I am, as my children, Young and energetic (and they will always be). Shouldn’t I leave them my dignified property, And cherish with them our hard-won prosperity? I am mean and arrogant, for what I’ve dedicated And experienced, is to be inherited and flourished.

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A SONNET TO YOUNG GRADUATES DADI CHEN

I always appreciate golden greens Overgrowing the splendor of sakura Yet piercing the eyes with a dew shining In early spring’s fantasy orchestra, For they will soon overwhelmingly replace By merrily quivering notes thriving All the transient noise of shallow ‘nd dull voice With the power of Nature’s magic wands. Oh, How I admire you, young graduates, For paths are your initiatives, not rates, For time is your humble slave, not master, For dreams are your in-fashion keys, not toys, For what I used to misuse, you now enjoy, And what you here possess, I miss dearly.

Teaching as a Human Experience

HALLS IN OUR BLOOD PAULA MARIE COOMER

The arterial runs in front of my door. The students bleed paper from fingerstrokes on keyboards; no more the days of fountain pens and blue blood ink. We are poor of spirit in comparison to the haughty claims of our teacher ancestors who thought knowledge was the key to life and now all knowledge is so small as to fit in a device dangling from a keychain. It is erotic, this loss of us, since what it means is that new forms will procreate, will merge and emerge and will vibrate a new species of human, mounding up from nothing, this nada, this notorious un-soup in which we are now submerged--ex nihilo nihil fit--but then, by comparison, what my grandmother teacher knew from her cabin schoolhouse vantage she kept sewed up tight in a thimble on the dresser beside her bed. The halls bleed us: teachers, students, activists. They close in by degrees--hot in summer, cold in winter, and, once, black mold grew from the ceiling. But they fixed all that. The great THEY who runs this place. This place in the middle of loamy dirt, miles from and between infinity and nowhere, this undulating plain of wheat near the airport where planes, the smallest of them, drop celebrities who visit us and remind us of what we are capable.

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DUST MARIE COOK

In a drama room corner A fan silently stands Its blades caked in dust Rich red dust Good dust From the surrounding farms For growing Lettuces, carrots, artichokes As a nurse I didn’t like dust The profession Didn’t like dust We cleaned and Steamed to be sterile But where there’s drama There’s dust And it can settle For a long time Drama does not Notice dust Its care is for The imagination The purpose of objects A dusty fan, A torn handkerchief, A finger-marked paper plane Dust does not get in the way Of epiphany

Teaching as a Human Experience

THE TEST MARIA DOLORES COSTA

Teacher, professor, whoever you are, I am reading the text; haven't got very far. Before closing the book and giving it a rest, I just need to know, will this be on the test? I have all my notes on the stuff that you say, although half of it I don't understand anyway. With an ample vocabulary I'm not very blessed, so I just need to know, will this be on the test? I am cramming and studying since the evening before. Graduation and finances will depend on my score. At four in the morning, this student is distressed, because I really must know if this will be on the test.

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ODE TO ED-U-CATE BARBARA COZZA

Ode to Autumn sun – Child-ren learn on …and on…and Climb to noise…chatter

New century howls – Dif-fer-en-ti-ate, scaf-fold Yea activity

Charter, Public, Fees Deep understanding, rigor Aye in-ter-act-ion

Share, cooperate In-qui-ry com-mu-ni-ty Think high…high, nay low

Shim-mer-ing in the moonlight The color and scent of sound Seems far a-way…far a-way

Teaching as a Human Experience

TEACHER JAMES CURRAN

My life is a window For birds to enter And perch on my bedstead Singing songs of which I know nothing But I’m willing to learn Give me feathers for skin That now weighs With heartache and memory Of ice ship mornings Pulling waffles from freezers Allow me to eat seeds Not remains of what Seeds once produced Flowering as energy In my blood My life is an open window No matter how cold No fear of snow A song for the rain A feather in the wind For a bird with too few

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IN DEFENSE OF POETRY CHAD DAVIDSON

In the poem we discuss in class, a lovely bird chatters on the patio. Afterward, I think of all those dying languages sequestered in the mouth alone, the kind animals probably speak. September, and the leaves declare their independence in single bursts. It all feels horribly vain. To declare. In airports, you have to swear, repeatedly, you have nothing to declare. They won’t let you on if you don’t, won’t let you off. You have to swear, like the angry man in the poem swears at the bird, tells it to shut up, even though the trees here are currently shutting up, or off. They do it voluntarily. It’s a mode of survival. Beauty does nothing for them in winter. Beauty is dangerous. Now I sound earnest. And all the day-glo plumage of that bird on the patio: where’d his extravagant get up get him? Precisely. And these Japanese maples decorating the meticulous walkways: aren’t they merely prized for their spectacular dying, the spectacle of it all, the perennial perish? Or because they die young, prove difficult to propagate, their yearly riots seem that much rarer, prized, like the oldest living parrot, registered at 108 years. It’s declared, it’s sworn to, it’s independently verified, attested. And so the test, I told my students before leaving, would not be comprehensive. What could be?

Teaching as a Human Experience

LESSONS ROBERT H. DELUTY

He loved to tell the story of how, On his first day of Yeshiva In Poland’s Jewish Ghetto, Mothers brought honey cakes, Shaped like the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, So that their children Would come to associate Learning with sweetness. A brilliant man, deprived by war Of even a high school education, He set foot on a college campus More than fifty years later to attend His first son’s Ph.D. conferral. When introduced to the faculty, With utmost respect and pleasure, He bowed. His second son, now a professor, Remembers these stories As he teaches his daughter Her ABCs.

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FRESHMAN ROBERT H. DELUTY

Came for advisement. Missing six fingers, Three from each hand. Left wrist bore a grid of Short, razor-thin scars. Eyes, unable to make contact, Danced wildly about the room. Fragile, frightened, damaged, Appeared a victim of abuse (Both self- and other-inflicted). First words: Tell me what to take, I want to help people.

Teaching as a Human Experience

DIFFERENCE AMITABH VIKRAM DWIVEDI

Prologue He doesn’t know the difference between two phonemes: [p] and [ph] He doesn’t know the reason: why should he know the difference? But he recalls: how often he felt humiliated, and Insulted in his village school. Dialogue He remembers his teacher used to say: “Learn your English lessons, first!” “They give us money to learn their language.” “Don’t bother about your native tongue.” “Nothing, you will get from this language, Which cannot make a difference between two phonemes.” How can he forget when his teacher shouted at him? “You weak; dumb head! Why do you stammer?” “Learn this difference and prove yourself.” Epilogue He also remembers when his teacher praised him. “Good, nice! Now you have learned the difference.” “Now, you can tell the world about our exploitation, In their language, in English.”

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THE ONLINE INSTRUCTOR’S LAMENT JONATHAN PORTER EASTMAN

Bending over jumbled alphabet reacting to robots, data streams, LED screens, students I commune with cut me into belittled bytes, multitask me, sequester me into segments divided between which, as with the distraction between breaths, I digitally exist, naturally but am supernaturally set aside, quarantined like a virus, placed in abeyance like a broken chocolate bar incrementally selected, temporarily, relished but in a moment rewrapped in glinting gold foil that could attract and tempt . . . if not shoved into a box and shelved with ridged chips, sugar-crusted nuts and gooey figs in the cornucopian cupboard of concentration whose eclectic smells remain electronically sealed from the senses behind a dull door. So, relegated to the remote, I keep like a covered painting, to my misanthropic self, my musky oils never giving up drying, always dying to be interpreted, or just to be beheld in some mind’s eye instead of hovering revoked from consideration and empathy like a mummy rising only for stints from a social sarcophagus when questions spark my counterparts’ desire to revive me, reward me for my patience with an email and small smiley face and the simple gift of connection.

Teaching as a Human Experience

COLLEGE HALLWAY ON TUESDAY DONNA M. ELKINS

I need to get an A in this class. I don’t think I’m doing too well. I haven’t been to that class for two weeks. I have to keep my GPA up. I need to register for next semester. Don’t take that English teacher. I took this class I didn’t really need. I don’t know what I want to do. This isn’t like high school. Why can’t I make up that test? They don’t care about you here. She just isn’t being fair. I have to write this research paper. It’s due on Thursday I think. I am doing so well in all my other classes. I don’t understand why I’m not passing. I haven’t been to class for three weeks. My grandmother’s neighbor got really sick. I had to take her to the doctor - twice. Can you tell me what I missed? Did we do anything important today? Sorry, I missed class again. Can I hand this in late? I need to get an A in this class.

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I really am getting excellent grades In all my other classes. It’s just this one for some reason. She has to be unfair.

Teaching as a Human Experience

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ERINYES A POEM FOR KATHLEEN MANGUM, SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER.

NATHAN ELLIOT

". . .she walked into the room and saw how upset I was, and she took me outside in the hall and asked me what was wrong. I could not even speak. She just knew. . I respected her, and feared her. She was wise, and strict . . ." —Michelle Ray-Gerbozy, 6th grade student of my grandmother’s in 1976.

In the flash of her bony hand are the ancient ones, the angry ones. Zeus. Jehovah. Athena. She is Shiva, Brahmin. She is Kali.

Her Old Testament eye sees sins against the hearth, unruly guests, cruel hosts, those who violate virgins.

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She casts out the sinners. She welcomes the observant. She comforts the scorned. She demands penance in repentance.

She creates holy fear. She inspires desperate love. And we give her blood, the blood of our twelve-year old hearts.

Teaching as a Human Experience

THE ESL CLASSROOM MEG EUBANK

A man from the far side of the world told me͒ “When I came to this country͒I had ͒ no ears no eyes and no legs. I could hear but not understand see words but not read them walk but not travel. America was not freedom until I could gain my senses again. A woman from the land of warmth wearing colors of the sun brought me a pale purple stone cupped lightly in her hands (as tears threatened to spill over her eyelashes with the pain of missing her parents and her home) All the way from India to Pennsylvania where the winter sun glinted off ice but gave no heat. A group of students from 8 different countries in Asia, Europe, South America, and Africa were asked, “What do you like best about America?” “Freedom to live how I want” “People are accepting here” “Chance to go to school” “Opportunity to get a job” “What do you dislike about America?” All answer, almost as if it were rehearsed, “The food.”

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POETRY ANALYSIS MEG EUBANK

Langston Hughes writes about a dream deferred͒ Drying up, Festering, Sagging, or͒Exploding. “I chose this poem because I understand it the best,” my student says. Her copy is scribbled on, Arabic characters hovering over English words. “Why do you think he titles it ‘Harlem’?” I ask. We talk about the social climate of Harlem in 1950s America We talk about dreams deferred drying up, festering, running, stinking, crusting, sagging, or exploding. “I would title it ‘Syria’.” she says, as she blinks away tears, thinking of dreams deferred.

Teaching as a Human Experience

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POETRY WORKSHOP – WITH KNIVES3 STEVE EVANS

for Mike Ladd

as the talk moves round the table the last poem in the exercise on love draws comments on rhyme and the use of assonance — no-one mentions the obvious that every second line mentions knives at last, the visiting expert’s turn — he holds his copy close scanning the page but can only see the massed cutlery its weight and sheen its keen serrated edges he glances at the author imagines her fussing over a table for two set with a jagged sculpture of eighty-eight knives and no forks or obsessively rattling her handbag’s metal contents while hypnotised by the shark’s mouth the brilliant maw of a kitchenware shop’s window — then he coughs and begins to speak of rhyme and assonance saying nothing about knives 3

This poem was previously published in, Friendly Street Reader No. 30, eds. Rob Walker & Louise Nicholas, Friendly Street Poets in association with Wakefield Press, Kent Town.

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GRADING PAPERS ROBERTA FABIANI

On the covered back porch English Composition II assignments stacked are waiting for my felt tip pen comments , suggestions and grades while the summer afternoon thunderstorm charges across the black and blue sky , unkept meadow and fresh mowed yard stirring loose leaves seriously sloshing the tree hanging bird bath. The sleek Cardinal and Downey Woodpecker family are not bothered by the steady slanted water flow at the suet block nor the fast moving Yellow Finches ,Wood Sparrows and the lone acrobatic Nuthatch that shift and shuffle about the filled –to-the-brim thistle sock. As the air cools, the rising moisture thickens thoughts and ideas away from this regular weekend task at hand the fresh pools of water simply beckon feather, wing and pale painted toes.

Teaching as a Human Experience

OKAY, KID, I’VE HAD IT SANDY FEINSTEIN

Toting up my own unwritten words as I collect pieces of your life in an assortment of colors— browns (barn) with yellows (doors) tumble through cyberspace. Maybe I did throw the gauntlet your way, but you’re no medievalist despite an occasional archaic flight. You picked up the glove of my writing hand, took its measure, cut the seams, sewed it up again so it fits your hand, your style. Hell of a job, if I do say so myself, and I do, without jealousy or envy. I know I’ve never been much good at the girly fashions, domestic details of home that reveal—what?— the offstage action, source of real life, some say. Give me a box of letters, an alphabetical deluge. I build with knots, chutes, and invisible ink.

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THE ADJUNCT4 BEVERLY FENIG I’m a note in the marginSometimes read sometimes Dead paper discarded. Not here nor there But everywhere OxyMoronic, Moving like air Through corridors unnoted. And yet When hand moves to pen, The paper marked, Stares back, Sticking out its tongue.

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This poem was previously published in, Prosopisia

Teaching as a Human Experience

SPLIT ENDS BEVERLY FENIG

Viciousness in the classroom! There she goes againEyes cast To hand and hair, The loose strand Far more fascinating Than my words will ever be. That ferocious fiddling! Even reading sisters-in-arms No isle of solidarityMight as well be husband and wife! The walls hissThe clock stops. Her goal- the doorMine- the key.

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READING "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER": THE OLD-TIME ADJUNCT'S OFFICE BEVERLY FENIG

I used to hate These yellow walls. Bareness attests to lack Of claim and care, color A hollow yellow, A smoldering yellow, I can sometimes Almost smell! But when asked to move, The pull is strong, Seeing pattern In the bareness, Myself Faded, unclaimed, In love with yellowOh don’t make me go!

Teaching as a Human Experience

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CHEAT5 GREGORY FRASER

Hang-ups in the dead of night, and after training ourselves to unplug before bed, crank calls at chance hours throughout the week. We didn’t want to stir up conflict, hassle with running a trace, and spent the summer waiting for one lunacy to fade away. Then, after the towers crumpled, nothing. My wife had failed a finance major, ruining his plan to graduate that May. Appeals (apologetic, cajoling) gave way to threats of litigation against our school. I didn’t know I could still run, an old man, cloaked in dust, coughed to a TV crew, awed by his breathless luck. And still I see my twenty freshmen on that campus hill in Queens, pleased with their release from “Tintern Abbey,” then stunned by the twin smokes climbing. My wife the Miltonist refused to budge, pointing out the all-too-obvious in the senior’s copied essay. It was late October before we noticed the calls 5

Previously published in: Answering the Ruins. Copyright © 2009 by Gregory Fraser. Published 2009 by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.

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had stopped, and didn’t he complain of losing an internship downtown? In our agnostic way—half-conscious, tinged with the self-parodic—we prayed that this whining cheat with his sense of entitlement hadn’t burned or been crushed by rubble. He did have a pleasant smile, and was his crime really such a disgrace? We watched the clock, kept ears pricked over toast and coffee, until he nearly became the son we never had, whose memory needed tending. Who’s to say our number, all along, wasn’t picked at random by a lonesome freak who simply quit one day? Still, neither of us dared to mention what I shrieked one August night (rabid, moon in my eye): Die, you little shit, assuming his to be the hostile silence on the opposite end of the line.

Teaching as a Human Experience

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THE BOY IN THE BLACK LEATHER JACKET6 ALICE FRIMAN

Once a week we meet across this desk and I am kind. A nervous dew betrays his lip, a dimple like a thumbtack stays his blush but still he comes—fresh from the crate this creamy boy, his eyes not blue not brown, but bright amazing color. I speak of commas and why he cannot spell. He leans to tell me why he did not make it right, shifts his weight and from the chair the leather jacket cracks and flings the light like black snow down my eyes. I do not move. When he leaves, the office smells of flowers. All week long I lie, seeking the lock box of the past to shove the present in, saying this storm that invades my peace, this manling in his Brut and leather, is but a Proustian flood to whet the tongue’s memory: an old book fallen open to the bud of an Irish boy who pressed me once too tight, too breathless tight, for being fourteen and Mother’s child. The truth is— he comes, wanting only 6

This poem was previously published in, Confrontation, in the Fall/Winter issue of 1986-87.

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what he was taught to know, not realizing what he already does while I who do and wish I didn’t am left in this office masquerading in a swivel chair.

Poems

Teaching as a Human Experience

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LEARNING TO READ7 ALICE B. FOGEL

I remember when each word was a tiny drawing, the perfect work of art: ecstatic carvings, exotic lines, simple curves conducting an inaudible opera on the page. I remember suddenly knowing that my mother didn’t see the black markings, their meanders through white valleys; she saw sounds, even things: she saw a boy, a boat, a tree. Now, at 3, my son’s letters are still mobile, unleashed to direction left to right, and without pedestals – like Inuit sculptures meant to be held, every which way, in the hand. So a 3 is an E, W is M, why must there be a 6 and a 9 – they are one and the same. Learning to read – not evening meaning to – we tie down the forms, tell them which way to go. They lose most of their freedom while we gain much of ours. Loving the story, his hand caresses the paper with the same yearning tenderness as mine smoothing hair from his brow – as if he could touch what the words say, as if he could feel in his hand the world 7

This poem was previously published in, I Love This Dark World (Zoland Books, 1996) and anthologized in Strange Terrain (Hobblebush Books, 2009).

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that speaks to him so strangely with his mother’s familiar voice. In my own old, best, repeated dream I float down a river on an open book, reach the greening shore in spring, and hear the Mother Voice call my name. It is the voice of earth and sky, sailing, blowing through the leaves of the book. It is the voice of the home where I want my son to go whenever he leaves home. Whenever he learns another word, every gain of his is my gain and my loss, every celebrated step full of mourning for its footprints left behind. My hands, full of joy, pause in their applause, positioned as in prayer: Please, don’t grow up too fast. Words, those broken twigs, those forked rivers, those unpaved roads, will carry him away from me, to other lives. There is not enough time to hold him without holding him back – the way I could in that brief time when meaning had no name. Even these words, carved so deep and hard by the circular motion of my hands, can never spell out enough love.

Teaching as a Human Experience

LOGOS LOUIS GALLO

I tell students they must also Consider the beauty of certain words Not in terms of meaning alone But as sound qua sound, That is, as music. Here, three words that mean The same thing in different languages: Casa, maison, house. Who likes the sound of casa best? Maybe a hand from way back, row six. How about house? No hands from any row ever. Maison? Ninety-nine percent every time. French, it’s always French. And then I tell them about deliquescence.

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THE DILEMMA FRANI GEIGER

I want to offer that extra credit for the students riding low on those D's. But I know when I do, every time, when it's through, It's always the ones with high B's.

Teaching as a Human Experience

WORDSWORTH WINTER SCHOOL, RYDAL HALL, GRASMERE TERRY GIFFORD

The deer in the mist out in the meadow early morning beyond the bend in the fast-running February brook looked up at us, as disappointed but unsurprised as, on our side, we were surprised and somehow rewarded for our early start unpromising wet walk – uphill, turn, descend to disturb local deer withdrawing now to woods as we withdrew to discuss in our groups whether deer in mist can make a poem

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in themselves for Wordsworthian post-pastoralists or whether such a poem needs the knowledge, for example, that this very spot may yet become the Ambleside bypass.

Teaching as a Human Experience

IN THE SORBONNE TERRY GIFFORD

we discuss the quality of yellow light in the painting and in the poem about the painting. The grey heads nod at the impossibility of ‘yellow light’. The students smile at memories of yellow light through curtains on delicate hair. Beyond the delicious discourse of the room, framed by high windows of history, the pale light on soft stone is impossible, as yet, to be named ‘yellow’.

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STANDARD ERROR DAVID GORDON GODDARD

An inference that’s very often made – ‘a population tends to closely share some feature that a smaller group displayed’ – is why my students need to be aware of standard error. Yet, it’s hard to learn, and students’ drive to listen fades with each attempt of mine to strive for ways to earn attention till my message has its reach. The teaching cycle brings around today my yearly chance to make this topic clear. I’ll aid my students, shorten what I say, and they can later go and persevere … … ask how it differs from the things it’s like, and why we need it, what we couldn’t do if it weren’t here. But can my students strike the hours in busy lives to see this through … … to think and tell themselves of things they know … related things … then try to make the link with standard error, find their gaps and so seek remedy where knowledge meets its brink? It’s four months on. A student whom I taught then calls to see me and in measured way explains she liked the insight I had brought to ‘estimation’, then goes on to say: “My research gathered data from a group, defined a mob of which the group’s just part; a feature in the group at six per cent would be, I thought, like echoed in the mob. I viewed the group as sample of the mob; but samples vary some from whence they’re drawn.

Teaching as a Human Experience

Your standard error helped me calculate how far from six my estimate might stray.” She smiles and says she’d thought I’d like to know that standard error served to underlie her thinking. Yes, I’m happy that is so – but more, she’d thought it worth enough to try.

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THE DEAN NORMA WALRATH GOLDSTEIN

Like a beached whale Exposed and thirsting on the gritty gray sand, Too heavy to budge with SOPs And accreditation mandates Amidst severe programmatic budget cuts, The dean moves. A flipper flutters, Encrusted seaweed laces flake, And decrees are heard a thousand ways By those who peer into quiet offices Where the dean only wishes To unearth a vision of the future, To ask for input To help steady the balance of the universe To move huge creatures into the sea where they belong. It takes a child like the Whale Rider even to notice That water is plentiful, That the power of the beast Comes from the power of the waves. With compassion, the division unites. A sea hawk squawks: Heave to, my hearties, and push, push, push.

Teaching as a Human Experience

ALONG THE WAY RICHARD K. GORDON

Blanca her family and their community Traveled north - Florida to PA Stopping and stooping Harvesting seasonal crops Along the way Blanca her family and their community Traveled to my PA university Stopping and stooping For mushrooms Along the way Blanca and community children too young To stoop in fields for mushrooms Traveled to my classroom To ease their way Along the way Blanca and other community children Sat, listened and danced in my classroom Swooning on words Traveling to imaginary places Along the way Blanca her family and their community Traveled north – PA to Maine Stopping and stooping Harvesting seasonal crops Along the way

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Blanca her family and their community Traveled south – Maine to PA Stopping and stooping Harvesting seasonal crops Along the way Blanca and the migrant community children Traveled to my classroom once again I sat and listened in a language new to me Descriptions of life they lived Along the way While in PA Blanca and her community told me The experience of migrant worker life Shared with me their eagerness to learn Along the way Blanca her family and their community Traveled south - PA to Florida Stopping and stooping Harvesting seasonal crops Along the way Bianca her family and her community Taught me to respect individuals Taught me to know and respect communities Taught me to value my time in their lives I became a teacher Along the way

Teaching as a Human Experience

TEACHING A SON TO READ ALISA GORDANEER

First the letters, like blocks each voice with different moods, each mood a different sound. This is what it means to moo, to ooze, to owe. What it sounds is what it means. Then syllables, wooden blocks stacked beside, and beside, and beside. Train cars bumped together, long rails of paper lining up, a prairie after snow: Ch, chi, chica, Chicago. Go. Go. Go! Until the train derails, its cargo of meaning spilled, and everything muddy. A babel jungle, the order of enough, and rough, the invisible, insidious silent E too much and we have to stop. Search the landscape for signs of how to clean this up. The book abandoned, I eye your long legs, the way you know how to build towers, tie shoes, write your name: face oblong with purpose. And want to wait before words link together, a necklace long as the tracks from then to now, a ribbon rolling

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into Chicago and far and rails and gone, all the words you’ll ever read— the way they stretch and take you.

Teaching as a Human Experience

WORD CHOICE EIMILE MÁIRÉAD GREEN Together they found solace in syntax: subject, verb, object– Order. (Follow the rules.) Together they navigated the rocky terrain of paragraph building because even then there was always something to grab hold of. (Find your footing.) Structure. But then they met Word Choice. And two roads diverged: Skinny. Sickly. Semantics. Silence. And they parted. She ran away for hundreds of miles. Empty stomach. Bird bones. Brittle hair breaking. (Broken.) Essay abandoned. Because actions speak. (Louder!)

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Because word chosen. Because silence.

Poems

Teaching as a Human Experience

CLASSROOMS SINEAD HAHESSY

I watched my classrooms disappear into the cyber sky, They fell and crashed and fizzled out as I stood closely by, I lamented their loss, their colour, their gloss, the people and their noise. The worlds recreated, the tired and the hated, the struggles and peaceful poise. Where was it gone? The classroom song, I loved to listen to. Onward and upward, bigger and better, spiralling out of control, the new classrooms emerged Not seen, not heard But temporal, intense and bold. Techno phobic computer illiterate, Discussing things untold, Weaving our story, Hoping for glory, Our learning precious as gold. And on it goes without relenting The blended learning bus The perspirations, negotiations and classrooms transformed thus.

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Notes I wrote this poem while undertaking a professional development class in learning technology. While attending the class I felt my mind reflecting on the demise of the traditional classroom setting and all the interaction that takes place there. Concurrently the post graduate nursing programmes that I had been teaching for almost ten years were changing from traditional classroom settings to on-line blended learning and I was lamenting their passing. The poem literally came to my mind in this way, as I imagined the classrooms flying up into the cyber sky!

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THE OLD PROFESSOR SINEAD HAHESSY

On campus in Summer, When the crowds are thin In the warm May sunlight I see him, walking in the brightness with the things that trouble him etched upon his face that make his eyebrows sour and overly hairy. His body is gnarly and strong. His hair floppy with nonchalance, A top a hopping brain, strained by persistent inquiry. Is he having a small day or a big day or a day of perpetual fragmented thought? I can clearly see his beauty in his cerebral wounds.

Notes This poem was inspired by the almost visionary sight of an elderly professor (who is retired) who I often see walking around the university campus. I often think about all the work he would have contributed to the scholarship in his discipline over the course of an academic career. I often wonder, does he feel invisible now and this poem is an attempt to secretly honor him from afar, as he does not know me or I him.

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STILL LIFE ELAINE HANDLEY

She tells me what she knows: she’ll rest in an easy chair hooked up to a drip. Over a few hours it will simmer through her, painlessly. I imagine the chemicals in her like oil spills catching fire all through her body, the flames lapping at the cancer. Cradled in that chair, lost in a mental twilight, I imagine she will drift back in time and think she is a small girl rocked to sleep on her mother’s lap. That touch will flicker through her brain, embers of a memory. Fourteen to twenty one days later her beautiful hair will fall out— she says on the thirteenth day she will shave her head. She’ll get her nails done, wear silk scarves. By Christmas her life will have grown back. We do not speak of the odds, that this is her second bout with cancer. She reports matter-of-factly that she’ll miss a few classes, her next paper might be late. I say okay, and we say goodbye. I sit at the window watching the day’s light drain away, holding my head, my fingers caught in my hair. I note the heat of my scalp, the weight of my skull, and how soon it will be dark.

Teaching as a Human Experience

THE CITIES OF THE WORLD ARE WAITING ERIK G. HEMMING

The cities of the world are waiting as quiet students during essay writing sitting motionless scattered across the map You look them straight in the eye and they do not see you They only have eyes inward for pictures that move – a thin layer over the invisible movement There they are: organisations, people, molecules, blood cells in circulation They are not visible on the postcards, passport photos, in the news or diaries But touch them lightly, or bend your ear and you will feel how something is flowing under the skin From a hill nearby a city looks like a seashell washed up right there just where you picked it up Right there, where you intercepted the message from the one who communicates with us always in all languages, with all signs, simultaneously The sound of the sea and the wind, and all the cities

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and the blood running inside all the students, quiet ... but listen: You cannot tell if it's your own city that whispers or heaven rushing between the mountains, across the lakes Something is moving under the surface Do not look, listen, right now a message is squeezing through to you

Teaching as a Human Experience

SLANGUAGE DANIELLE IZZO

It’s time for you to speak with conviction. Convict constellations of Consternations Contentions Of content And contempt against ConMen Mentally Messy and tangled Combs stuck in Knots and ain’ts Slang and twang Commanding. It’s time to relax in syntax. Swept in phonemes Focused Morphed in morphology Engaged in Subversive verses Like vixens Thunderous and sexy Submissive to the Odes, songs and rage of Pages pulsing In the connectivity Electricity Surging like Magnets against Maggots

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Mass-accaring Language. It’s time for you to take a vow of silence against literary violence. One course Off the course One taste Of refrain Slain On power tripWiring slips Grips And pick up sticks And stones Weary bones Like Hughes’ Weary Blues Loose In the retaliation Of motivation Education The relation of citation Consolation and Constructs of conviction Organizations of lingual addiction. It’s time to strike your words like spears. Weapons of mass Instruction Communication corruption Interruption In this television program Succumb-tion Trans-mission Engines of submission To the Gods Of Dialogue To the kings Of Speech Preaching to praise and honor

Teaching as a Human Experience

The horror of a Slanguage slaying we. It’s time to belittle the dribble. Scribble scrabble Scratching away the value of words Halting eloquence With “ums” and “hums” “uhs” and “duhs” Clumsy wissDone with the dementia Of linguistic inertia. It’s time to wake up from the literate slumber. Dreams to shatter Splatter the squalor Of consciousness against Conviction The contradiction of evolution The execution of elocution Verbal contagion Contrived Versions of survival Surveying The vacancy of our voice. It’s time for the alarms to sound. Our eyes pop And we look at all we lost.

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OPUS POCUS8 MURRAY JENNINGS

A wet Tuesday night, 12 o’clock looms, the pile of unmarked assignments teeters over the keyboard, threatening the blank screen with ‘qwerty’ which would make as much sense as anything I might type, I’m so weary. Thunderclaps, a cloudburst and a gale. But under the tin roof the deaf Beethoven overrides it in my headphones, his last completed work, a string quartet he would never hear played. I have already outlived him by seven years and must have made as many black marks on white space as he did, mine just fragments, his joined bar to bar, movement to movement, opus to opus, to greatness. Now the thundercloud has passed, the wind is down to brief gusts, the urgency of my work has diminished by sixteen strings on a scale of F major. After a night’s sleep I will finish awarding percentages to my students, just one of whom might have preferred ‘qwerty’ to a mark below 30. 8

This poem was previously published in, Flash Company – Poems and Fictions, by Murray Jennings. Published in 2007 by Stone’s Publishing Pty Ltd, Bayswater, Western Australia.

Teaching as a Human Experience

THE STUDENT GUNHILD JENSEN

I am a miner my hammer; dedication my chisel; curiosity my mountain; the world I am a painter my canvas; inspiration my brush; felicity my audience; the world I am a wanderer my journey; comprehension my path; eternity my horizon; the world I am a student; miner, painter, wanderer in light, in dark I travel, I dream

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CANNED PINEAPPLE SLICES HERSHMAN JOHN

It’s not about Aloha or Ohana, it’s about a Haole. Isn’t it always? The fruit heart color is canned history. Many spiky yucca crowns overthrow the kingdom of Kamehameha. The taste is a conqueror, aggressive as piranhas. From ships and sails to annexation, you lay spiny at my feet pine cone pillager. The white label’s negative space is of hospitality, a treat from White Shell Woman’s home adrift, beyond my reach. The history reveals an unwanted destiny, the can is unopened before stories begin. Grandma Black Eagle whispers “It was a Crow woman who scalped him”. A cultivated crown cutting the pine cone and a man named George. As flamboyant as eggs benedict or red lipstick on a female impersonator’s lips singing: “A name to never be forgotten.” Armstrong is aggressive as a piranha. He loved the spotlight charge on a silver mane stallion with a sword etched, and glistening sun radiant Custer. He wasn’t even a semi-handsome Haole, a bit too squirrely for my taste. I first heard the story by the river. The moon and I listen with intent, and quiet the moon-eyed crickets. Custer was supposed to die in battle, he lived a life unwanted. I and my people and the little people be damned without the radiant honor his soldiers received. The Haole roped by the wrists and horse dragged to Canada, first splashing though the Little Bighorn and past the bloodied snow. His body is hidden from ghosthunters and psychics by medicine circles. The ragged body never buried a cut crown of golden locks. His gravestone is a hidden knife. She plunged the blade heart deep laughing like all those men decorated at the last massacre of Wounded Knee. There is a monument outside of Crow Agency, up on a hill and below a big sky of blue. There is no one there, and the can opener reveals the contents of sweet tropical circles, a paradise removed. Stolen kings and

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orchid leis all ready to Cook. Or to eat or even bake upside down. Oananas! O Ananas and O Pinas, my favorite bites, its fructose acidic enough to mask the bitterest of all Manifest Destiny.

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POEM TRANSLATED FROM THE GLOBAL STUDY OF INDIGENOUS NAMES OF THE AMERICAS HERSHMAN JOHN I. Abstract: Surnames, Tribal and Place Names Gaagii, Arapaho, Niyol, Tawa, O Canada, Assiniboine, Oneida, Kewanwytewa, Dezba, Iowa, Nez Perce, Alaska, Omaha, Hastiin Nez, Tatanka, Hidatsa, Aloha, Chipewa, Dakota, Mo’o, Pawnee. Kuwanyamtiwa, Nantucket, Me Catchen, Mau Loa… II. Poetics O Ravens, In the Sky People, Navigating whirl winds to tornados blotting out sun rays, Meeting where the heavens move the largest blue mountain And he who cooks stones At standing rock, a boy I used to know, warrior to war, his nose Is dusty and pierced, an urban Indian against the current he swims To the land that is not an island, his form is towering as a bull [or buffalo?]. Through willow trees, I see your spirited breath lemon puckered, Best friend of Big Lizard Horned People. It’s pretty. Isn’t that badger pretty strutting over the hill toward, dreaming webs of captured nightmares, the tiny lights pulsing. The measure is sleep amid ever-night?9 9

Navajo, Arapaho, Dine, Hopi, Iroquois, Navajo [Athabascan], Assiniboine, Oneida nation, Hopi, Dine’, Iowa, Nez Perce, Aluet Island People, Omaha, Dine’, Sioux, Hidatsa band, Hawaiian, Minnesota Chippewa, Sioux nation, Hawaiian, Pawnee. Hopi, Canadian Mi’kmaq [lost in translation], North American Indian [I lost the references I scratched on a piece of paper], Kingdom of Hawai’i…

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DECLINE AND FALL10 RAE DESMOND JONES

i hate them the truth is out! & they hate me.

them, the barbarians in baseball hats, twisting in chairs lined up in artificial order and carving their loathing on the tabletops.

do you know why the roman empire fell? I ask. who cares? A boy giggles. that is the reason, i say.

you are old & fat, they say. they are young & fat, i don’t say because I don’t want them to get healthy.

they can stay ugly & stupid so i can despise them.

why envy the awkward root they didn’t have or their perfect wet dreams pearling on the television screen?

outside the aluminium rimmed window a crow strops his beak against a tree trunk 10

The poem was previously published in, Decline and Fall (ASM Publishing, Macao; It was republished in, It Comes From All Directions New & Selected Poems by Rae Desmond Jones, Grand Parade Poets, Wollongong Australia, 2013.

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so that it will be sharp to dig soft white worms from the dark earth. i yearn for that brutal freedom.

the students resist my will although their heads bow, broken for a second.

the room constricts us all. i almost say get out, go back to your bad DVDs & your hopeless dreams: be unemployable. daub graffiti on trains & put as many needles in your arms as you want, die if it seems romantic.

let there be war between us.

Teaching as a Human Experience

THE ANARCHY OF POETRY

ANGELA MASTERSON JONES a poem is a radical thing where image and meaning convene it turns minutes to hours seeds grass and weeds flowers not folding to anyone’s king the worst place for poems is in school where bright white lights heighten tight rules for a poem slants romantic shunning pun and pedantic seasoning young and reasoning fools

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PEDAGOGY ___________________ ___________

POETRY ANGELA MASTERSON JONES

There is a point where the student becomes the teacher and the question transmutes into its own answer fuller than any brimming, the truth of Yes where No could never lie. And it isn’t Socrates, exactly, at Plato’s knee or Plato bowed to Aristotle but a parent bending to tie the shoe of a child that runs faster barefoot.

Teaching as a Human Experience

THE CREATIVE WRITING TEACHER REPENTS

CHRISTOPHER (KIT) KELEN too much poetry and more on the way I feel responsible for this I've encouraged it I told them they were miracle workers they bent their heads to prayer devout it was pure poetry God received all this undeliverable stuff I confess I fed the beast the image grew so many heads each uglier than the one before and mine the sorriest of all too late, too late they hit the streets

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some trod the boards some were apprehended in the very act of rhyme others are tapping their feet to this day there's poetry wherever they go

Poems

Teaching as a Human Experience

NIGHT COMPUTER SCIENCE CLASS JENNIFER LAGIER

He’s six foot five, dressed in torn levis, flip flops, faded Grateful Dead tee shirt, reeks of marijuana, arrives in the computer lab thirty minutes after class has started. “I have a few issues,” he tells me, hands over forms requesting accommodation, shares the names and numbers of his probation officer and court appointed psychiatrist. The following week Leonard is at his workstation barefoot and shirtless. Agitated, he explains how the FBI has stolen his files, homework to be turned in this evening. Red-eyed and shaking, he hands me a scuffed, dirt-caked, cracked floppy disk. The blue eagle, talons extended, tattooed across his naked chest, pulls my eyes from the crosses carved into each knuckle. Grabbing my wrist, Leonard pleads, explains how federal agents

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are trying their best to frame and destroy him. It’s going to be eighteen difficult weeks till this semester is over.

Poems

Teaching as a Human Experience

COMMUNITY COLLEGE INCIDENT LOG JENNIFER LAGIER

Gang members overrun Central Park, menace passing walkers once daylight has faded. Nearby classrooms grow spontaneously toxic. Students hyperventilate, report heart palpitations. An instructor goes numb, convulses, falls to the floor. I radio security, dial 911. Red lights and sirens circle campus. I reassure those who panic, field incoming calls. Darkness brings new disasters. I record each instance in my fattening log.

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ENGLISH 101 RONNA J LEVY

Simple sentences are forests thick with impossible trees foliage of symbols, syllables, and sounds rich mixtures of meaning for various voices to fell. We go around the room one at a time each student, each adult. Each voice negotiates the flora. Each voice a bemused bulldozer bumping into clumps: consonants, vowels. Confusion, frustration, quiet embarrassment. Decode, decipher. Words scrape my ears; my eyes silently roll I wilt within, stuff my sadness under my desk. We continue. I coach encourage each voice through the cutting of the brush. And I wonder: Will trees fall in this forest? Will anyone hear? .

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ROMEO + JULIET ASHLEY LISTER

Romeo and Juliet is the first play that William Shakespeare wrote for Leonardo Di Caprio and Claire Down Syndrome It is the story of two star-crossed livers And the bloody feud between the Capsules and the Mongs. Juliet is only thirteen years old when she boffs Romeo Which is even younger than my sister when she did Jason Walmsley And it makes Romeo a nonce. Who should be on a list. Romeo says: “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell.” This means he loves Juliet even though she smells. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” Juliet says this because she wants to know where Romeo is. Because he’s softly broken a light through her yonder window in the east. My favourite part in Romeo and Juliet was when Sampson licked his own nipple at the start of the film. It’s not a gay thing. I just thought it was really cool. Romeo and Juliet would have been happy If Friar Lawrence hadn’t interfered with Romeo The way priests like to interfere with young boys Juliet had a nurse, even though she wasn’t sick

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This is like Friar Lawrence supplying drugs Even though he wasn’t a dealer And Romeo having a cock Even though he was played by Leonardo Di Caprio When Juliet was pretending to be dead I reckon Romeo touched her In the crypt I would’ve done.

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TRUST LOST UNDER AN ALGORITHMIC TREE MICHAEL KGOMOTSO MASEMOLA

We sat and watched birds fly sky high And were rewarded by droppings on our brows, Which, when wiped dry Mapped a pattern signed by gods Of Linux an C++ Who encrypted the mirth of jokes Heard only by prophetic minds That traded the Mosaic Tablet With the Apple Tablet With ease sans stylus! Alas! the false deities At last decoded Hid under the Algorithmic Tree Like a camouflaged stolen Quotation in the deft hand Of a talented plagiarist Whose word is almost a sword Upon which the trusting bosom falls! Yes, a grave shallow like its uppermost Occupant is slowly filled As we TurnitIn And encrypt on the headstone Here Lies The Sin Of Commission And Trust Lost Under an Algorithmic Tree

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THE MAKING OF SUPERHEROES JILL MARIE MCSWEENEY

I always thought my teachers were not normal like you or I. That they were superheroes, with powers to inspire rather than fly. I longed to hold their mastery of poise and finesse; And to have their control of monsters called ‘Self-doubt’ and ‘Success’. I knew the day was coming when the costume would be mine; And always felt I’d wear it, but would never shine. One day a teacher shocked me as they began to confess: "When I was a young student, I was often frozen with distress. I would wander through my teaching armed with uncertainty, Until a mentor shared that he was once like you and me. One day a student will need you to help them through this time, And all I ask is that you share the story of your climb." I realized then that teaching wasn’t having an enchanted cape, It was looking at a student and seeing an ever evolving shape. The magic of a teacher is that they can always see, What lies inside a student, and can show them what they can be.

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THE OLD PROFESSOR11 (AUSTIN WARREN’S NEW ENGLAND SEMINAR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 1960) PETER MEINKE Grinding your teeth to brownish stumps you’d rasp each Tuesday afternoon at three Are all the pilgrims safely on the bus? Through the open windows summer dust mixed with the crump of mowers Transfixed we watched you grind your nubby teeth to stumps waiting for you to spur us through our jumps from Cotton Mather up through Emily Is every pilgrim happy on this bus? We never were sure when you were serious chaining your Camels unpuritanically grinding your browning teeth to nubby stumps and tossing questions far from the syllabus: Would you rather live on Broad or Beacon Street? Are Smith and Bradford riding the same bus? Wisdom consists in knowing what you love and how to share it like an autumn feast: Grinding your nubby teeth to brownish stumps you spat each pilgrim wiser from the bus

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This poem was previously published in, “The Old Professor” from Lucky Bones, by Peter Meinke, © 2014. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

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THE TEACHER12 PETER MEINKE

for Robert Detweiler (1931-2008) If laughter's the brightest blade on the Lord's lawn He grafted on you His broad green thumb: when lines furrowed by your eyes we saw jokes building like spring rain and your delight in them doubled our fun What do we want from our friends if not a lifting once in a while of the world's weight? I see you hunched at your desk eyes inches from a book light beams slanted with dust mimicking galaxies: motes of gold with their satellites circling the sun Beauty's everywhere miracles daily and something lit the world like a wick: you were glad to call it God What we need's not judgment but love you'd tell us which doesn't mean that Dean So&so isn't full of shit Around the country now students at their daily tasks stop every once in a while and smile at some memory

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This poem was previously published in, “The Teacher” from Zinc Fingers: Poems A to Z, by Peter Meinke, © 2000. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Teaching as a Human Experience

of you slouched by the board turning toward them to ask OK who watched 'Star Trek' last night? beginning the dialogue: remembering not only how you were funny but how you made them realize Though the big things happen outside of books books too are vital: our best words & thoughts pooling on paper oases in a desert of dying verbs granting our parched selves this rare chance: Drink

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EYES JIM MELLO

Nervous. Excitement. Introductions. Backgrounds. Syllabus. Expectations. Student. Eyes on me. Introductions. Backgrounds. Methods. Results. Proposal. Defense. Doctor. Eyes on me. Methods. Results. Appointment. Office. Teaching. Research. Faculty. Eyes on me. Appointment. Office. Classes. Students. Advisor. Scholar. Mentor. Eyes on me. Classes. Students. Nervous. Excitement. Syllabus. Expectations. Teacher. Some eyes on me. Nervous. Excitement. Groups. Collaboration. Everyone. Together. Learners. All eyes on each other.

Teaching as a Human Experience

ANSWERS LUCY MICHAEL

It was a long late night last night. Seems so long ago. You yawn. 457, 453 can't resist and do the same. A silent cry for sleep in the almost-silence, a neverending barely there sound of papers turned, one by one by one by one by one across the rows. I wriggle my toes. Trying not to shake the creaky almost-breaky platform from which I stare long eyed, down the rows. Line by line by line I look for papers, bags and barely traceable tells of deceit that might flicker on your face. All but one. He is asleep committed in his dozy discomfort to failure. Waiting for the clock to tick-tock and release him. Why he came I don't know. Perhaps he doesn't either.

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THE SEMINAR ERICA VERNOLD MILLER

The first time we meet you are wearing your favorite sweater Worn, gently faded, and pilling in places Your sweater appears to be too small to contain you Its sleeves creeping ever so slightly past your wrists Its frayed edges creating a rag-tag fringe along the hem Loose threads hanging, begging to be plucked I give a tug Your sweater begins to slowly unravel Taking with it your comfort Your prejudice Your misconceptions Your misunderstanding I tug some more Unraveling your previous indoctrination Your “I know everything” no one can teach me anything attitude Soon there is nothing left of your sweater Only a yarn heap remains at your feet You drop to your knees clinging to the remnants like a lifeline All the while cursing me for destroying your cozy cocoon Calling me a tyrant, a dictator, a bully to anyone who will listen You openly decry me and my methods Just as you are about to lash out you find the gifts I have bequeathed to you They are hidden in the pile Digging down deep you grip them in your trembling hands Shiny, smooth, pointed at the ends It takes you time to register what they are I watch you intently I see the recognition slowly setting in This revelation is the catalyst to propel you into action Taking my words to heart

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Using the tools that I have given you to reconceptualize all that you have known before Our final meeting is very different Gone is your too small fraying sweater Your anger has been replaced with gratitude You are now standing proudly before me draped in a brightly colored scarf, a scarf of your own making

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THE LATE ASSIGNMENT SHANNON MORREIRA

When I ask why the assignment wasn’t submitted on time, He tells me that he had to go home Over the weekend To get some different clothes. At the time I wonder, why miss a test to change your clothes? But then I move on to the next lecture, the next student, the next deadline. Weeks later I learn that he was Amakrwala, an initiate, Wearing his formal clothes at university: Tweed jacket and cloth cap, Symbols of his new manhood. These clothes are marked with pride in Khayelitsha. They show you have passed through initiation, Performed the rite of passage Stepped into a new social position. But here they are markers of something else, so that He felt uncomfortable as a visibly Xhosa man on this white campus. So much so that he had to go home, Negotiate with his parents to be allowed to change into (what other people consider to be) everyday clothes, And miss his deadline in the process. I speak to this young man, and give him an extension on his late assignment, While I wonder what is undone by education.

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SPOKEN WORD? LAURA MORRISON

Mothers, sisters, daughters, women. Mothers, sisters, daughters, women.

MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS, WOMEN. MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS, WOMEN! Spoken word without sound. Spoken words without words spoken. Spoken word without— within— with-all— with everyone there and listening. And trying. And trying to listen. Spoken words without sound. Spoken words without words spoken. But with a greater focus than what was focused on before and trying to listen and trying to get the message, to get the words…to hear the sounds…

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The sounds. The sounds. The sounds that aren’t there, but that are rising and being shared and being heard. The sounds of working and repeating…the sounds that are recited by the radicals all over the screens in the room. And the sounds of attachments and messages being sent. And messages being received.

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SEASONAL INSTRUCTION DISORDER CHARMAYNE MULLIGAN From the front of the room, I watch my students conduct research... Spring is for kinesiology…the frenetic running and slapping of sticks of the lacrosse players draws students’ eyes for in-depth study. Or sometimes it’s soccer, all those glorious thumps of foot hitting ball, precision needed to make the practice net Summer is for ornithological review…flocks of geese maneuver around the retaining pond. Later, social science is necessary for examining the family dynamics of mothers with their fluffy, fuzzy goslings I learn … their interests change with the seasons. By fall, a researcher might be rewarded with the impressive swoop of a hawk from the roof…or engage in dendrology as the leaves change on a dozen or more trees Winter brings transportation as a subject….cars on the highway, prone to sliding down the steep embankment, bring tow trucks and sometimes, if lucky, sirens. More often, too-fast driven cars take 180s in the parking lot. Poetry in motion. They watch. I watch. I wait. I listen. I learn. I reflect … I know why classrooms often have no windows.

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CLASS TIME FOR THE ARTS13 RICH MURPHY Marketing students make up the poetry class (“once upon a time, a classy student group took creative writing by surprise… the end”), practicing hands at “confusion, attraction, aversion.” for selling serial boxes, television spots, and computer popup tarts for straight As. Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, and Adrienne Rich sit in corners facing the walls, useless but for columns that point at windmills with nouns. The dunce cap sidekicks study how to steal time from employers and from other obligators. Admen madmen promotions unleash rhetorician pickpockets onto city sidewalks and into suburban shopping malls. At graduation the underclass toasts survival with salt water in flutes because only breathing remains free. The good for nothing sleeps origami on websites, crumpled sex in dorm wastebaskets.

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This poem was previously published in, Harbinger Asylum: Transcendent Zero Press, 2014.

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NATIONAL STUDENT SURVEY MARK O’HARA

A curse on you for the tyranny of your myopic metrics. A curse on you for your spurious consumerist rationale; your fetish for satisfaction. A curse on you for favouring the favoured. (But worst of all, for the fact that in spite of everything, you have your uses). A blessing on that amazing, transformational teacher who kept us interested, motivated. A curse on that PowerPoint-reading bore, who couldn’t even do that well! A blessing on that inspiring member of staff who made me look at the world differently. A curse on that tutor who treated us like children. A blessing on that skilled practitioner who adapted his sessions to meet our needs. A curse on he who never challenged me, who never had any time. A blessing on her; she mixed practical with theoretical and varied her teaching styles. A curse on the confused, disorganised one who misled us, who lost our work. A blessing on that course team who did everything possible. A curse on the member of staff who didn’t know about my learning contract. A blessing on those who made their teaching inclusive in response to my disability. A curse on her who said ‘You’ll be fine’ when clearly I wasn’t; I was lost. A blessing on that passionate, caring person who replied to my e-mail quickly.

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A curse on that academic who made me feel afraid to approach him. A blessing on definitely the best teacher I’ve had in all my years of study. A blessing. A blessing.

Teaching as a Human Experience

GRADUATION MARK O’HARA

Sea of sodden gowns, old acquaintances renewed. All rise for the Lord! Smiles and such high, high heels; a tottering mother's pride.

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I WAS TAUGHT TO TEACH KATE OXLEY

I was taught to teach by Grandma Ann with Brigadoon, Cabrera, and Oklahoma, with friend that had Amazing Technicolor Dream Coats and Hard Knock Lives. I was taught to teach by a big sister that read Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark just before bed in our room with purple walls. I was taught to teach by a huge older brother who let me know what people feel like when you crush them either by sitting on them at 7 or breaking promises at 27. I was taught to teach by my little campers who instructed me in the importance of Edward Cullen, and taught me that to a 9 year old a simple walking stick can make your entire summer. I was taught to teach by 13 flunking Freshman who would rather talk about their pregnant classmates than the drama unfolding between the Montagues and Capulets. I was taught to teach by 28 eighteen your old gear heads that were more interested in who was driving to lunch than all the things that I had to say in an entire semester. I was taught to teach by every single tear that fell the day that I finally let Block Three get under my skin. I was taught to teach by long hours in the big comfy chair in the back of room 114 just trying not to screw it up too badly.

Teaching as a Human Experience

I was taught to teach by the tears in Claire’s eyes when I took her test away and said “see me after class” I was taught to teach by a student that taught me how to speak with my hands so that she could hear me even without her sense of hearing. I was taught to teach by a kid in a camo hat that I gave a detention to for arriving too late to class who arrived too early to his grave. I was taught to teach by being the new teacher to 371 students, in 6 different courses and three different schools in the course of one year.

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THE ENGLISH LESSON SYLVIA PETTER

You tell me in German that you need to pass so that you can start a new life. I tell you in English that I will no longer speak to you in German. Your eyes ask me how you will understand. You will, I answer. I want to talk to you about leapfrogging. How it is the new buzzword that makes one fly over obstacles. How they don´t tell you that you might fall. That it can hurt just like when you were a child and first tried it. You shake your head. You do not understand the word leapfrog. I stand before you, bend forward, my legs slightly apart, and I jump. You laugh. I nod. I see that you understand. You will now never forget the link between the beginning and where it might lead. And I will never forget the way you laughed and the light in your eyes.

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ABSENT ON MANUS ISLAND ROBYN PHILIP

we didn’t talk about him at breakfast we didn’t discuss him in the morning seminar I didn’t add his name to the role I didn’t write him into the course description I didn’t add his name to the lecture notes I didn’t mention him when I spoke with admin staff I didn’t chat about him with friends at dinner But I can’t stop thinking about him the Iranian man 23 detained on a PNG island bleeding on a filthy prison floor skull crushed, neck broken refuge and freedom absent not found not granted the government said no he is not welcome his name won’t be stamped on a visa he came by boat I cry for his mother–could she prepare him for this? I cry for her son–could his teachers prepare him for this? for this I cry for us–we were not prepared. On 17 February 2014, following riots at Manus Island refugee detention camp, Papua New Guinea, more than 60 asylum seekers were injured and one man killed.

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STYMIED PHILIP PORTER

apologies to Richard 111

Stymied, I’m trapped between rhyme and reason, Rhythm insists itself along my lines: There are six feet in a hexameter; Five have I found to-day instead of six A foot! a foot! My kingdom for a foot! My fault! I can’t tell a spondee from an anapest a dactyl from a trochee Exeuant

Teaching as a Human Experience

HAVE I TOLD YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU TODAY? ANNETTE PRIESMAN

Do you know how much you piss me off? How many times must I explain how to use a comma? How many times must I explain how to use a semi-colon? How many times must I tell you a new sentence begins with a capital letter? How many times must I tell you “read your textbook”? How many times must I say “bring a draft for peer edit”? How many times must I say “you cannot plagiarize”? And if you do I shall bust your ass. How many times must I tell you the more PIE the better the SHITS the more PIE the better the SHITS the more PIE the better the SHITS and don’t forget the CRAAP.

Do you know how I feel when you cry in my arms and tell me your dad is homeless or your mum has just been sent to prison

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for dealing ice or that you never read a book in your life and now you too are addicted to reading? Do you know how I feel when you tell me you are a single parent who works 40 hours a week and sleeps 3 hours a night and still makes A? Do you know how I feel when you enter my classroom with your convoluted thoughts and your serpentine ideas and 16 weeks later you are writing for publication ? Do you know how I feel when you tell me I lit the spark that glows inside you and now rages like a wild fire burning up the land and you don’t ever want to die? Do you know how I feel when you tell me I make you want to be a better person?

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Do you know that every day you remind me that you are doing something good? Do you have any idea how worthwhile you ma ke me fee l?

Have I told you how much I love you today?

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STONE UPON STONE UPON STONE UPON STONE PATRICIA C. ROBINSON

Stone upon stone upon stone upon stone, I step. Up up. Up stairs that only go to the top. I search the seams and cracks in the walls with my eyes, and I stop near the top. I put my face against the cold stones and feel air teasing my cheek. The seams are wider here. They snake across the wall. Weave through the rocks. An embroidered tapestry. I look through a crack. My eye bends like a finger, poking and pushing between the stones. I can see a thread of light, of green. I slide my cracked hand into my pocket and pull out my cutting knife. I open it and slip the blade into a crevice. I scratch and scrape my knife against rock. Dust falls. Lingering in the air. Latching onto my clothes. It is cool and damp in this stone stairwell, but I am sweating. A dirty, stinking Rapunzel. My blistered hand is throbbing. Again, I look at the stone tapestry, now frayed from my scratching. My eye has room to twist and turn within the crack. An insect travelling through in-between places. I see

Teaching as a Human Experience

more light, more green. And what is that? But my eyes are gritty and tired. I descend the stairs, stepping down. Stone upon stone upon stone. Down, and down the stairs that only go to the bottom. I lay in my bed. Eyes sealed tight. Dreams soak into my skin. I am water. Seeping through seams. Slipping through cracks. Dripping through inbetween places. These “in-between places” (Feuerverger, 2001) represent the paths through which knowledge travels. Knowledge that seeps into us, whether our eyes are open or closed, like moisture soaking into our skin, becoming part of who we are; our being. It is also knowledge that we secrete, through our pores, our thoughts, words and actions, and our ways of being in the classroom and in the world. Yet awareness of this knowledge and how it informs our being often exists beyond the stone walls of our consciousness. Without poetic language and imagery to explore, uncover, and articulate, I am a prisoner in a stone tower - a dirty, stinking Rapunzel. —Feuerverger, G. (2001). Oasis of Dreams: Teaching and Learning Peace in a Jewish Palestinian Village in Israel. New York: RoutledgeFalmer

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THE TEACHING PROFESSION KABINI SANGA

Yesterday, we went fishing. Today, we’re fishing. Tomorrow, we’re going fishing.

Teaching as a Human Experience

TAI CHI TEACHER MARTIN T SEDGLEY

When I was the new student, you told me you see white energy between your hands, feel it tingling fingers, wrists and arms And your easiness with that started me wondering … I felt my density begin to soften. When I had watched my hands enough, and I was ready to go inside, you told me the energy comes up from the Earth, through the legs, into the Tan Tien, turning the waist so your arms are the last to move. And as I tried, my body became the grace of your movement … I felt my flighty energy settle into new understanding. When, one time, I had the chance to work with you, we pushed hands together, and your ever smiling gentleness relaxed my tension, so my dawning sense could know the evenness of our bodies … as I felt the rhythm of a higher harmony with you. When I could share with you the experience of teaching, your told me, with your enthusiasm of the eternal explorer, about letting the Teaching flow through you, the Source working free of your mind. And I felt the warmth of true affirmation … of that which I had already known.

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Then, one day, beside you I saw your tears of humility as we all listened to your praises sung so high, marking your graduation with distinction. It honoured me to know you then as a fellow student, and as I reached out to touch you … I felt the rare beauty of my own love for another’s success. And now, suddenly, you’re gone. Yet however deeply I look within I find only acceptance. It seems you had saved the greatest lesson till last.

Teaching as a Human Experience

STAR-CROSSED IN ENGLISH NINE NOEL SLOBODA

When those tiny hands flew up— fingernails glistening— I had imagined a balcony in Verona crumbling under the weight of a dozen Juliets. They had all agreed only I could play the silly old lady who so desperately wants to help the young but can’t work miracles— or get Romeo to wake up, please, at the end of the play.

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ACADEMIA IS LOSING ITS APPEAL KATHRYN SUTHERLAND

I am continually being told It’s all about the outputs Publish Develop research capacity Publish Secure external grant funding Publish Focus on research and international publications; do as little teaching and service as is possible Publish It is the key determinant of progression But, I have just had a new baby I have two children under five I have too many kids doing too many activities with too many friends My elderly mother lives with us and I have a full teaching load Academia is losing its appeal My course has increased from 50 to 170 students in four years and I have received no additional resource or support to offset the workload I work from around 9-8 during term time I have to work seven days a week I feel exhausted at the start of most working weeks I am currently having counselling to deal with anxiety and stress I need to take sleeping pills on Sunday night

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Whatever I do is never enough Academia is losing its appeal The University increases the teaching load but it still expects the same amount of research and service so it goes from being a 40-40-20 position to a 70-40-20 position In academia it seems to be the norm that to succeed you need to work many more hours than you are paid for. What work-life balance? Academia is losing its appeal. I love my job, though I do field work, which I enjoy My research and teaching offer much joy and inspiration Students bring me joy I feel privileged to do what I love every day I have the best job in the world Just offer me some support Say hello to me in the corridor Ask me about my work Teach me how to write and access external grants Give me the opportunity to gain a teaching qualification and support me with some teaching relief Be proactive in expressing encouragement when I do well Focus on the things that matter Because academia is losing its appeal.

A poem composed entirely from the words of participants in a research project on the experiences of early career academics in New Zealand universities. This poem was previously published in, HERDSA News. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

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ON THE SUCCESS TREADMILL14 KATHRYN SUTHERLAND

Success is a complicated thing to measure Is it 40/40/20 Or 30/30/30, and where’s the other 10? I won a research medal I have a service award I like teaching Success is a funny thing I feel successful at what I do because I’m happy lucky secure free autonomous I want to make the world a better place make a lasting contribution to human knowledge be a purist in the pursuit of science do what I love “I’ll have the fun bits, please” It’s equal teaching, research and service Just go for the research; it’s all about the research It’s not rocket science. 14

This poem was previously published in, HERDSA News. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Teaching as a Human Experience

Do well at teaching. Publish. Get grants. That’s the long and the short of it. Being an academic is about getting out there It’s about working with people employing post-docs getting grants having students working with you being on committees being the Dean It’s about NOT being the Pro Vice Chancellor, because that really is an admin job. Teaching is very important for me, but the currency is your head. So it has to be research. I’ll sacrifice teaching a little bit if it means more research. We always get told to play the game, but if you don’t know what the game is, you can’t play it You sort of spin one plate and then you go on to the next one and you’ve got three going. You’ve got your research you’ve got your teaching you’ve got your admin that plate’s starting to slow down is it going to fall off? I never want to be the academic who ruined his life to be famous in his field.

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I have a hundred publications. I have a job my parents are proud of. I still have a little bit of life left at the end of the day. Ultimately, if you based your measurement for success on the institution, you’d be off to Oprah to sort your head out. I just want to be happy.

This poem is composed entirely from the words of participants in an international research project on the experiences of successful early career academics in universities in Canada, New Zealand and Sweden

Teaching as a Human Experience

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE ACADEMY PETER CHARLES TAYLOR

Beatic Gorgon writhing locks painted visage sweet smile of death Gliding merrily as in flowering meadows thru corridors of power basking in the craven glow of upturned faces Whilst downcast eyes mask fear of being petrified Some clamour to embrace the Stone Angel with the soft touch recruiting souls freezing hearts Others demur brows furrowed lips curling epithets whispered if only thoughts could kill I imagine Perseus holding heroically Medusa’s severed head the sweet taste of cruel blood

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But alas the crowd quietens wild cheering muted looking askance Dark shadows Stheno and Euyrale immortals guarding the despotic kingdom lurking long in tortured imaginations

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Teaching as a Human Experience

THE SWANSEA PANTOUM MIMI THEBO

for J.G. ‘Where was this setting?’ ‘Somewhere near Swansea,’ embarrassed, regretting that he let me see. Somewhere near Swansea? … a girl on the sand that he let me see running out of her hand. A girl on the sand, she held all his dreams, running out of her hand. He was aching, it seems… She held all his dreams, but the boy found another… he’s still aching, it seems, but not for the lover. The boy found another, but he lost his verse, aches not for the lover, for his voice…that’s much worse. He lost his verse. I go back to that day; his voice is much worse. Did I chase it away?

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I go back to that day; embarrassed, regretting. Did I chase it away… with, ‘Where was this setting?’

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THE ARCHEOLOGY OF WHITE PEOPLE15

P. L. THOMAS

I was a white girl in a crowd of white girls in the park —“Pink Rabbits,” The National “They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.” —Daisy, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

we gather into schools all our children red brown yellow black and white leaving them all blue we continue to serve them the food of Fitzgerald and Hemingway the archeology of white people a Lost Generation fabricated to fool cigarettes chandeliers and swimming pools such glorious decadent people we pull the wool over this rainbow of eyes all lined up in rows of pastel shirts like Jordan almonds or Easter eggs “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whispering and the champagne and the stars.”

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This poem was previously published in, English Journal, Vol. 104, No. 2, November 2014. http://www.ncte.org/journals/ej/issues/v104-2

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Ignore the body in the road we whisper in their tiny innocent ears Isn’t that golden car spectacular?

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THE KINDNESS SCHOOL (BEYOND THE ARCHEOLOGY OF WHITE PEOPLE, PT. 2)16

P.L. THOMAS

it simply happened one day when the teachers decided enough was enough all the boys with OCD spent the day playing drums or riding their bicycles and the introverts sat quietly smiling periodically in the corners while the extroverts laughed and laughed and soon the pleasures became many as varied as the children themselves until one day a child stood to proclaim after reading Hamlet all on her own “I say, we will have no more tests” to which there was thunderous cheering yes it seemed simple and obvious enough the founding of the kindness school with open doors and children singing

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This poem was previously published in, English Journal, Vol. 104, No. 2, November 2014. http://www.ncte.org/journals/ej/issues/v104-2

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TIME FOR BEING N. N. TRAKAKIS

I overheard him this afternoon recount an anecdote for the fourth time. It’s the seventh day, today but he never rests (and so is forbidden from entering upon the eighth). Welcome, applause, he emerges as the Keynote Speaker from a half-lit corner half-awake, half-mad a classic gin martini (with green olive garnish) in one hand a crumbling copy of Sein und Zeit (yes, the German) in the other arms and face of boils and scabs both hands on lectern, eyes downcast, visage veiled by long greying hair tossed by a breeze that threatens to throw his pile of papers to the four corners not once making eye contact with the audience (already asleep anyway) reading each sentence line-by-line (like a poem) a true tête-à-tête (frustrating those yearning for a heart-to-heart). As he winds his way past a tortuous chain of premises “In accordance with the three axioms and thirteen steps of the Master Argument it will be shown why there must be exactly fifty chairs in this room…” I notice a shabby old man in the audience (isn’t he the janitor?) increasingly infuriated with what he is hearing blood rushing to his head all at once jumps up, raises his chair high, hurls it out: “NOW there are fifty fucking chairs in the room!”

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I RISE DANIELLE VALENILLA

They say that America needs help and that our education system is in trouble The data says it, the parents say it, and the teachers have always said it And Indiana asked us to RISE to the expectations to the standards to the occasion for reform and revolution And they sent us to battle to defend our livelihood against a rubric designed to weed out the false teachers an unnatural natural selection of sorts the best teachers advancing and the worst falling behind It may seem logical, in the way so many wars do, until the casualty numbers come in And then all that is left is the curious way so many have fallen when asked to rise But I rise in spite of your rubric not because of it Because you can’t fit saving a young girl from an abusive teen relationship into a box Because there is no cell in your table to tally the number of greetings I give a student who otherwise is not acknowledged by an adult for the first three hours of every morning Because instilling the passion for humanity and deep thinking and poetic language is not something on which I am scored

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You give me language that almost negates the purpose of language that being, to communicate Phrases like “above and beyond” label evaluation cubicles on a document in a way that suggests they are able to be universally understood We do not need elusive semantics; we need feedback And no, not all of my students were engaged today, because Jason’s mom has cancer and today she faces chemo and I’m okay with his indifference to Shakespeare at the moment And yes, I did ask a question that was at the bottom of Bloom’s taxonomy, but you know, Sierra hasn’t attended my class for four weeks and I’m just glad she’s in school today It’s been nice for you to visit for this brief observation of what we do here in my culture, my community, my classroom, but this isn’t a reality show you can tune in to sparingly What we do here is a process just as rigorous and gut-wrenching as any other What you see is a preview at best and a professional grenade at worst Our morale cannot be the casualty of a red tape war on time constraints and budgets Our conversations cannot be a collection of code words we keep close to our PLCs We all know what it means to get “dinged” And we all know what it means to be “targeted” And it’s true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks That is, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks but I am a professional and I am an educator I am the dog, the trick, and the biscuit Teacher means I’m learning Teacher means I’m growing Teacher means that I can fail, make mistakes, and error, yet still be effective at what I do Please, talk to me about true standardization Let’s change the conversation about accountability

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Neither of which have anything to do with those domains used to grade my greatness This is not about my pay scale, but it is about value Do you value the hours I dedicate to grading one hundred forty-five, threepage essays off the clock? Do you value the sleepless nights of anxiety? I steal office supplies from home I have nightmares about not having enough copies on Monday I take abuse from my inbox and my voicemail and the news I watch at night And when a student chokes in my classroom, I give CPR And when a fight breaks out in the hallway, I jump in the middle to protect And when a stranger brings the violence of the world to our doors, I step in front Because though my colleagues and I navigate a system of 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s like mysterious clues in a Minesweeper game, waiting at any moment for an explosion to blow up all of the hard work, my job is not a game My job is not even a job This is not what I do, but it is who I am. It is not a responsibility I take lightly. It is not a crusade on which I can give a numeric value. I am a teacher. I will play by the rules and jump through the hoops but when I don’t fit into the template, I will still rise. We will all rise, above and beyond, at a highly effective rate of ascension, not because of the points and not because of the fear of flying above the radar whether in our schools or in a poem. We will rise simply because our kids need us to, because we’re teachers, and that’s what we do.

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CLASSROOM – DAY – LIFE: GO17 ELIZABETH VANDEUSEN-MACLEOD

Cohort-induced emotional breakdown. I need some rest, busy working to do my best. Coffee makes the world go ‘round. The amazing light shows of spring storm A host, of golden daffodils. Summer: It cannot come any sooner. The sun is shining bright, Campfires beneath the stars. Light blazed and the remnants of the fire became infinitely calm. Only 2 things on my mind: Paul Newman & a ride home. Books take me away from reality. I dream of my classroom. A man’s passion is endless sun. Hope floats…because I said so. Open your eyes, you’re missing out. It goes by fast. Do not lose the keys. Grab my camera or live in the moment? Taking time to smell the roses Surprises me every day That makes all the difference. Live life by laughing a lot ‘Cause good humor is always in season. I think I’m becoming my mom. Three words true, life goes on. Don’t stop, don’t change, stay beautiful Let’s create a poetic world. Our generation’s journey is not complete. 17 This cento poem was inspired by our future educators at Central Michigan University – Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

Teaching as a Human Experience

I want my own classroom. I understand I was meant to be a teacher. I dream of a perfect classroom sitting before me. Communication is crucial. Running, running fast. I am constantly finding myself every day Forever searching for a deeper meaning. Learn from your students each day Developing a culture of reached potential Until confidence is overflowing. I believe the possibilities are endless. Let me learn from where I have been. This life is fueled with passion We all have a legacy to fulfill. Innocence of my key to life. I feel like I would be a great wizard Shy but outspoken, adventurous but quiet. Feared she would never have a real home I became something new, just for you. I will give you everything that I can. I still hear trumpets. I am from a community strong with Chippewa pride. I am a fearless messenger, For all you have to do is hold tight. In the eyes of people, I see hope. I understand there are no two people alike. I keep no record of wrongs. Free, let me be me. Perfect is you.

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THE FOUNTAIN DAVID K. WEISER

I hear a droning voice Patiently explaining. I remember it is mine. Gray with age and chalk-dust, I have scrawled out my life Upon a mile of blackboards. Am I running out of breath And things to say? Or time? Or all of the above? The robot substitute With mouse and flashing screen Stands by to take control. But someone waves a hand, And raises a youthful voice, Brightly questioning. Our words and thoughts converge; A lesson has been learned. And I am young again.

Teaching as a Human Experience

IN THE QUADRANGLE THEATRE ROEL WIJLAND

So much of life is duty. The best you can do is trim your beard And show up on time. —Geoff Cochrane

1. The Colour Turtoise The wooden pews rise steeply. On the other side of the courtyard the Clocktower bell strikes once. The Kop breathes as a continuous congregation that has been waiting for all of us right here since 1885. Autonomously, their testudo formation becomes a single Roman shield

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becomes a blur becomes a space only my head that I can’t ever seem to remember. I notice being me when I clear my throat. 2. Powerpoint Notes Slide Fifteen Discount the basics. Reconstitute fruit. Verbalise a noun. Value detergent. Promise to re--Ǧhydrate the forehead frown. Rip the golden wrapper & snackdrift into ecstasy. For all is chocolate.

Teaching as a Human Experience

3. Miss Scarlett with a Knife I saw the light and it was red. —James Brown

My colleague is a corpse, and has had a delicately carved noose tied around his neck for years. His head has fallen sideways, his name and Lecturer Destruct! faded heart that confirms Johnny loved Alicia on this back bench back in 1956, when pockets had lock blades when lipstick was always on when no dresses had no flowers and so often roses before fold--Ǧaway

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writing ledges in blue plastic laminate before friends and likes on Facebook. 4. Dr. Black and Mr. Boddy Love Sundays!

The perpetual victims of shillelagh law are bored heavily, and know to say so. We catch up at the coffee--Ǧmachine Memento Mori and contemplate how to count opinions that don’t matter in new ways & vice versa & then talk football.

Teaching as a Human Experience

LIBRARIAN JENNIFER WILSON

You sit I stand You listen I speak You watch I do Who is learning here? I know this by heart Process too complex To learn in a shot Need a little practice Room to play And get it wrong No time for that now But I’m here For you To help and guide

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Through the labyrinth To help you own it To make it yours So you are confident And brave And you know you know And maybe know better than some tutors Because you come to the Library And you force through the traumas And you don’t care about asking a stupid question You won’t hold back Waiting for mummy’s hand to spoon-feed You know there are things you don’t know But you own it And I’m always here for reassurance If you need it But it’s your skill Your passion Your life That makes this job.

Teaching as a Human Experience

CRITICAL THINKING ROBERT EDWARD WITMER

for Henry David Thoreau through starlit nights and tree-topped days those constant inky conversations with myself I we don’t always agree

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POETRY LESSONS DANIEL XERRI

‘Your lessons leave me numb,’ she said. Her coral red hair caught the sunlight and I flinched away as if she were on fire. The disgrace of not being the inspiring teacher I had imagined myself to be as I expounded on the words etched into the folds of my brain. I had wanted to free them from houses without mirrors, set them loose in cathedrals of light. I had brought poems to class thinking they’d sneak them away and stash them in the crevices of their lives, to feed on them in moments of beauty, sorrow, depravity. ‘I have poems I’d like to share too,’ she added. How could I have been so blind?

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Editors Karen Head is Director of the Communication Center at Georgia Tech, and an Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. Her research areas focus on writing and communication theory and pedagogical practice, especially in the following areas: implementation and development of writing centers, writing program administration, communication ecologies, technical and business communication, multidisciplinary communication, and creative writing. In 2012-13, she was part of the GT team awarded a Gates Foundation Grant to develop one of the first Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) focused on college writing, and she has published about the experience. She has also published four books of poetry (Sassing, My Paris Year, Shadow Boxes and On Occasion: Four Poets, One Year) and exhibited several acclaimed digital poetry projects. An award winning teacher, Head’s courses center on creating a variety of texts that demonstrate adaptation of multimodal rhetorical strategies and tools. In 2013, she won Georgia Tech's CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Award. Patrick Blessinger is the Founder and Executive Director of the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) and Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Education at St. John’s University. He has held various positions in academia in the US and EU. He is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences and he has published many books and articles. He is a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Denmark and Governor’s Teaching Fellow for the State of Georgia, USA. He is the editor-in-chief of two academic journals and two book series on teaching with a special interest in leadership, human experience and meaning-making.

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About the Authors

Contributors Sandra Alcosser's poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry and Push Cart Anthology. Her books A Fish to Feed All Hunger and Except by Nature have received many prestigious literary awards. Recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, she served as Montana’s first poet laureate and teaches in MFA programs for San Diego State and Pacific Universities. Laura Apol is an associate professor at Michigan State University, where she teaches children's literature and poetry, and regularly takes students (undergraduate and graduate) on learning abroad programs. In addition to numerous professional publications, she is the author of two collections of her own poems: Falling into Grace, and Crossing the Ladder of Sun (winner of the Oklahoma Book Award). Her third collection, Requiem, Rwanda (forthcoming in February 2015), is drawn from her work using writing to facilitate healing among survivors of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi. Andrew Bailes, Teacher in Charge of Creative Writing A Level, City and Islington 6th Form, London. Andrew is a graduate of Goldsmiths College’s MA Contemporary Approaches to English Studies and the Institute of Education’s Post-Compulsory PGCE, and has been teaching at an innercity sixth form college for ten years. The new Creative Writing A Level having given him back his mojo, he reckons he could do maybe ten more now if he had to. He has published poetry and short fiction with Dog Chair Press since 2004, appeared in ‘The Art of Dissent’ in 2012, and is working with Marshgate Press on the first of his ‘Bad Haiku’ trilogy of novels. Luci Gorell Barnes. My professional life began in the world of physical theatre but I gradually migrated to the realm of visual arts. My work revolves around themes of childhood, isolation and belonging; and academic study has allowed me to weave a theoretical thread through this. I work with people who find themselves on the margins, developing flexible and responsive processes that allow us to think imaginatively with ourselves, and each other. Issues of access and engagement have been integral to my work throughout, and I see my practice contributing to a community of disciplines that embraces family support, health services, and education.

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Susan Cherie Beam, Adjunct Faculty; Doctoral Student, Temple University. Susan Cherie Beam is presently working on her PhD in Literature at Temple University, and teaches composition and literature as an adjunct faculty member at Harrisburg Area Community College, University of Baltimore, and York College. In her spare time, she enjoys writing, both professionally and personally, and spending time with colleagues and friends. Brian Beatty’s jokes, poems and short stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The Bark, Conduit, Elephant Journal, The Glasgow Review of Books, Hobart, McSweeney’s, The Moth, Phoebe, The Quarterly and Seventeen. Brian’s writing has also been featured in public art projects and on public radio. He sometimes performs as a storyteller. Brian was born and raised in Brazil, Indiana, but now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dennis Ken Bideshi [Ph.D. (Genetics), M(ASCP), M(CLS)] is a Professor of Biology at California Baptist University (CBU), a Clinical Microbiologist, and a Project Scientist at the University of California, Riverside, USA. Over the past 25 years, Dr. Bideshi has taught at several institutions of higher learning. He is an academic advisor to undergraduate students enrolled in Pre-Medicine, Pre-Nursing, and Health Sciences at CBU. The poem was inspired by exceptional and multitalented students who, in their current vocation, have become professional role models to their younger counterparts. Amanda Bigler received her BA in English Literature with a Creative Writing emphasis from the University of Kansas in the United States. She then completed her MA in Literature with a negotiated pathway in Literature and Creative Writing from Loughborough University in 2013. Currently, she is a postgraduate research student and seminar teacher at Loughborough University. Amanda's research focuses on contemporary literature, humanist American and British literature, and empathy in contemporary short fiction. William (Bill) Edgar Boyd, Professor of Geography, Chair of Human Research Ethics and Animal Care & Ethics Committees, Southern Cross University, Australia. His scholarly interests range from the geosciences (environmental change, landscape studies and geoarchaeology) to the humanities (community engagement in environmental management, cultural heritage and Indigenous issues). His scholarly interests draw on

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reflective practice and research and educational ethics as analytical frames. His practice focuses on facilitative and formative support to academics and students, and integratation of scholarly and ethics processes into research planning and development, PhD and early career professional development, and undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and learning. Eva Wennås Brante, Senior lecturer, PhD, Department of pedagogical, curricular and professional studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden. Eva Wennås Brante completed her doctoral degree in educational studies at Gothenburg University 2014. She is currently a senior lecturer at Department of pedagogical, curricular and professional studies at Gothenburg University. She has a background as a primary school teacher. During her doctoral studies she interviewed several teachers which had left their profession for different reasons. These interviews resulted in poems. Her research interest, besides teachers’ experiences, is reading comprehension; especially how text and picture integration affect comprehension for readers with dyslexia. Matt Bryden, EFL and Creative Writing teacher. Matt is currently poetry practitioner on the Making of Me project, using poetry with residents of care homes across the South West. He is also creative learning leader of Story Door, improving literacy in 8 – 11 year-olds through creative writing. His poetry is widely published in the UK, and his first collection Boxing the Compass (Templar) was launched at Keats House in 2013. His translation of Taiwanese poet Ami, The Desire to Sing after Sunset, was launched at the Taipei Literature festival 2013. He has a website: mattbryden.co.uk Lori Beth Caress attended Grinnell College and is an honors graduate of Washington University in St Louis. Her graduate work was at the New York University. She was a school teacher in Los Angeles, California for fifteen years before relocating to Atlanta Georgia where she studied poetry at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center. Her work which focuses on the frailty and beauty of human interpersonal relations has been published in the Eclectic and several other venues. John Casquarelli is the author of two full-length collections, On Equilibrium of Song (Overpass Books 2011) and Lavender (Authorspress 2014). He is an English Instructor at CUNY. In addition to teaching, John serves as poetry editor for Otter Magazine (http://ottermagazine.com/). He was awarded the 2010 Esther Hyneman Award for Poetry. His work has

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appeared in several journals and anthologies including Storm Cycle: Best of Kind of a Hurricane Press, Ginosko Literary Journal, Pyrokinection, Kinship of Rivers, Miracle, Downtown Brooklyn, Pulp, Brooklyn Paramount, and Mind[less] Muse. Dadi Chen is Lecturer of English culture and literature, Xi’an Jiaotong Univeristy, China and PhD student, ICLON Graduate School of Teaching, Leiden University, the Netherlands. Dadi Chen is now working in the Netherlands on a PhD project comparing self-perceptions between Chinese and Dutch EFL teachers. In addition to his passion for education, he is interested in both Chinese and English literature, and presently becomes a freelance writer for the Chinese website of Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW). His articles cover both the right to education and the inspirations of Dutch culture or local artists. Paula Marie Coomer, Instructor, Department of English, Washington State University. Paula is a university writing instructor with an interest in experimental writing and the author of the food memoir Blue Moon Vegetarian. Her single works have appeared in many anthologies and publications, most recently Perceptions and Spilt Infinitive. Other books include the acclaimed novel Dove Creek, short stories Summer of Government Cheese, and two poetry collections—Devil at the Crossroads and Nurses Who Love English. A cookbook, Blue Moon Vegan, is scheduled for a 2015 release as is a second novel, Jagged Edge of the Sky, both from Booktrope. Marie Cook, Teacher at Werribee Secondary College, Victoria, Australia. I am a writer and an educator in Australia, and have a Diploma in Education, an MA in Creative Nonfiction and am beginning a PhD in Writing. I have been an educator for twenty years, including being Head of Drama Departments in secondary schools plus teaching English and History, and teaching writing classes to teachers at English state and national conferences. I have also taught creative electives at university and community centers. Educating can consume much of our waking, and sometimes sleeping time, so it is important to call upon our creativity. Maria Dolores Costa is the chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at California State University, Los Angeles, and a professor of Spanish. Her specialty is Spanish narrative from the 18th century to the present.

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Barbara Cozza is an Associate Professor, Assistant Chairperson and Program Director for the Ed.D. in Instructional Leadership, in the Department of Administration and Instructional Leadership. Her research targets school reform issues in the areas of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and leadership. She is presently senior editor for The Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education. She mentors doctorate and administration students and teaches courses in the areas of curriculum, qualitative research, dissertation seminar, and educational leadership. James Curran lives in Baltimore, Maryland. I am currently teaching English and writing at Stevenson University. I have been an author of poetry, songs, and fiction for over forty year. I have been published in several books, journals, and educational publications. I am an advocate of the idea that nothing should stand in the way of success and that anyone can create given an inspiration. I would like to thank both Clarinda Harriss and Charlotte Wulf for the inspiration, and I would also like to thank my wife, Irene for the opportunities to pursue images jogging through my imagination. Chad Davidson is the author of From the Fire Hills (2014), The Last Predicta (2008), and Consolation Miracle (2003), all three from Southern Illinois UP, as well as co-author with Gregory Fraser of two textbooks, including Writing Poetry: Creative and Critical Approaches (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). His poems have appeared in AGNI, Boston Review, DoubleTake, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. He is a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of West Georgia near Atlanta. Robert H. Deluty, Associate Dean of the Graduate School, UMBC. Dr. Deluty has been a psychology professor at UMBC since 1980, and was named Presidential Teaching Professor in 2002. His poems and essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun, The Pegasus Review, Modern Haiku, Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy, Psychiatric Times, the Journal of Poetry Therapy, Muse of Fire, The Faculty Voice, and many other newspapers, journals, and anthologies. Dr. Deluty’s forty-seventh book, Being Wakeful, was published in December 2014. Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi is assistant professor of linguistics at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, India. His research interests include language documentation, writing descriptive grammars, and the

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preservation of rare and endangered languages in South Asia. He has contributed articles to many English journals. His most recent books are A Grammar of Hadoti (Lincom Europa Academic Publications, 2012) and A Grammar of Bhadarwahi (Lincom Europa Academic Publications, 2013). As a poet, he has published around fifty poems in different anthologies worldwide. Until recently, his poem “Mother” has been included as a prologue to Motherhood and War: International Perspectives (Eds.), Palgrave Macmillan Press. 2014. Jonathan Porter Eastman, Course Review Specialist and Creative Writing Instructor, Columbia College (Missouri). On a course development and review staff, I also teach Introduction to Creative Writing-Multigenre online. Sometimes I edit; recently, The Oranges are Sweet, about a WW II pilot. I’ve taught creative writing at Mizzou and screened for The Missouri Review; in the M.F.A. program at the University of Montana, I studied under Richard Hugo. My poems appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Cutbank and Mirror Northwest and were anthologized in Midwest Literary Magazine, Voices from the Interior: Poets of Missouri, and Where We Are: The Montana Poets Anthology. Donna M. Elkins, Dean of Academic Affairs, Jefferson Community and Technical College Southwest, Louisville, Kentucky, holds a PhD in Communication and has always loved to write. In addition to teaching for many years and working as an academic administrator, she has always written fiction and poetry on the side. She caught the love of higher education during her own college undergraduate experience and that love for students and learning has never faded. True student conversations overheard outside her office inspired this poem. Nathan Elliott (Online Lecturer) teaches literature and composition for Georgia Perimeter College. He received his Ph.D. in Victorian Literature in 2006. In 2011 he moved to the island of Newfoundland to be with his Canadian wife and son. He manages to work in Georgia, while living in Canada, through the deft use of the internet. The literary magazine Creative Nonfiction plans to publish a piece on his immigration experiences in the summer of 2015. Currently he is working on two children’s novels set in Atlantic Canada. Meg Eubank, Writing/ESL Specialist, Bucks County Community College. Meg Eubank currently works with ESL students at Bucks County Community College. She has a MA Ed: English Language Arts from

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Arcadia University. Meg currently serves on the Board of Directors for the educational nonprofit Welcoming the Stranger and as Secretary for the PA/NJ College Reading and Learning Association. She has experience working in the field of education with everyone from kindergarten students to adult learners. Meg has worked as a tutor, an ESL Instructor, a nonprofit coordinator, a high school English teacher, and a curriculum designer. Steve Evans, Head of English, Creative Writing & Australian Studies, Flinders University, South Australia. Steve Evans teaches creative writing, and is a reviewer, literary editor for an international journal, and has been on the͒organising committee for six literary festivals. He has also been on arts funding and literary prize panels, is a member of the National Council of the Australian Poetry Centre in Australia, and has won various poetry prizes. He has published 13 books, most recently a poetry chapbook entitled Adult Fiction. Roberta Fabiani (MFA, BA) lives and writes in Rochester, WI. Roberta is a Senior Lecturer at UW Rock -The University of Wisconsin Colleges. Sandy Feinstein, Honors Program Coordinator & Associate Professor of English, Penn State Berks. Sandy Feinstein has published in a variety of genres, including poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and scholarship on medieval and early modern literature with an occasional foray into the 19th and 20th centuries. The poem that appears in this collection is part of a series entitled Ovenbird (this bird’s call has been transcribed as “Teacher, teacher”) begun while supervising a creative writing honors thesis. She and her former student still communicate by exchanging poems in response to one another’s work. Beverly Fenig is an adjunct lecturer at the City University of New York, where for many years, she has taught writing courses in the English Department at Queens College and Queensborough Community College. She has had poems published in small press literary journals and online publications, and she has participated in several poetry readings in New York City, including one at radio station, WBAI. Currently, she is working on a collection of poems about the adjunct experience and the joys and challenges of teaching.

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Gregory Fraser is the author of three poetry collections: Strange Pietà (Texas Tech University Press, 2003), Answering the Ruins (2009), and Designed for Flight (2014), both from Northwestern University Press. He is also the co-author, with Chad Davidson, of the workshop textbook Writing Poetry (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008) and the critical writing textbook Analyze Anything (Bloomsbury, 2012). His poetry has appeared in journals including The Paris Review, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review. The recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fraser serves as professor of English at the University of West Georgia. Alice Friman. Poet-in-Residence. Georgia College & State University. Alice Friman’s sixth full-length collection is The View from Saturn from LSU Press. Her previous collection is Vinculum, LSU, for which she won the 2012 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry. She is a recipient of a 2012 Pushcart Prize and is included in Best American Poetry 2009. Friman lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she is Poet-in-Residence at Georgia College. Her podcast series, Ask Alice, is sponsored by the Georgia College MFA program and can be seen on YouTube. Alice B. Fogel is the NH State Poet Laureate (2014-2019). Her most recent collection, Interval: Poems Based Upon Bach’s Goldberg Variations, won the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature. Her third book, Be That Empty, was a national poetry bestseller, and she is also the author of Strange Terrain, a “how-to” book on learning to appreciate poetry without necessarily “getting” it. Nominated for “Best of the Web” as well as 6 times for the Pushcart, her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, Robert Hass’s Poet’s Choice, Spillway, Hotel Amerika, Crazyhorse, and Pleiades, and she has received an individual artist’s fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other awards. Louis Gallo, Professor of English, Radford University. My work has appeared in Fiction Fix, Glimmer Train, Hollins Critic (forthcoming), Rattle, Southern Quarterly, New Orleans Review, Xavier Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Texas Review, Baltimore Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Ledge, storySouth, Houston Literary Review, Tampa Review, Raving Dove, The Journal (Ohio), Greensboro Review, and many others. Chapbooks include THE TRUTH CHANGES and THE ABOMINATION OF FASCINATION. I am

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founding editor of the now defunct journals, THE BARATARIA REVIEW and BOOKS: A NEW ORLEANS REVIEW. Terry Gifford is Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Writing and Environment, Bath Spa University and Profesor Honorifico at the University of Alicante. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently, with Christopher North, Al Otro Lado del Aguilar (2011), a book in English and Spanish, and Ted Hughes (2009), Reconnecting With John Muir: Essays in Post-Pastoral Practice (2006), Pastoral (1999), Green Voices: Understanding Contemporary Nature Poetry (2011 [1995]), editor of The Cambridge Companion to Ted Hughes (2011) and New Casebook: Ted Hughes (2015), and is a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Environment (2014). David Gordon Goddard, Senior Lecturer, Education-focused, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. David Goddard is a medical educator and occupational physician. For 25 years he has worked with students at Monash University, a job he loves. His teaching in population health includes the subject of this poem. Many of his students have struggled to grasp what standard error is and how it may help them. Therefore, as a teacher, he felt joy when a student valued this hard won item of learning enough to apply it to something important. That inspired this poem. Norma Walrath Goldstein, poet, journalist, teacher, editor, is Dean of Humanities, Retired, Shoreline Community College (WA) and Montgomery College (MD). She taught postsecondary English, creative writing, and education for several years. Dr. Goldstein’s scholarship covers British, African, Latin American and American literatures and faculty professional development. A national writing trainer, she also taught faculty at Harbin University in China, edited regional publications and published essays and poetry in various academic journals. Dr. Goldstein received her bachelor and master’s degrees from Connecticut College, a Certificate of Advanced Studies degree from Wesleyan University, and her doctorate from the University of Rhode Island. Richard K. Gordon is Professor of Education at California State University. His specific research is in the area of urban education and the academic and social success of minority K-12 students. He is developing an Instructional Curriculum Organizer that blends the academic and social components of instruction. Investigative interests focus on critical theory

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and phenomenology. He was the first international faculty member to work at Tokyo Gakugei University's "Curriculum Center for Teaching.” Dr. Gordon taught primary grades for several years and fondly remembers how these students "taught" him how to teach. He is a father and husband. Alisa Gordaneer, Sessional instructor, University of Victoria, Associate faculty, Royal Roads University. Alisa teaches journalism, academic writing, and critical thinking in Victoria, Canada. She holds an MA in English, specializing in Canadian literature, is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and has also worked as a newspaper editor, communications consultant and freelance journalist. The recipient of numerous awards for her poetry and journalism, both in Canada and the United States, she is preparing to launch her next book, Still Hungry, poems about food/relationships, with Winnipeg’s Signature Editions in April 2015. Eimile Máiréad Green is an English teacher at Maumee Valley Country Day School and also serves as a teacher consultant with the National Writing Project. She has published articles and presented with organizations, such as the Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts, the Ohio Council of the International Reading Association and TESOL International Association. Her creative non-fiction, flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous publications, including Common Threads, The Font, The Linnet’s Wings, and Skive Magazine. She lives with her family in Toledo, Ohio. Frani Geiger is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Scenic Design and Technology at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia. She has worked professionally in Washington DC as the Technical Director for Ganymede Arts, and as the Production Manager for the Washington Women in Theatre. She has also worked with the John G. Shedd Institute in Eugene Oregon for 3 summer seasons as the Lead Scenic Artist. She graduated from the University of Oregon with an MFA in Theatre Design and Technology in 2012, and from Wesleyan University in 2007 with a BA in theatre. Sinead Hahessy is a Lecturer and Post Graduate Programme Director at The School of Nursing & Midwifery, at the National University of Ireland, Galway where she has worked for 14 years. Sinead is a PhD candidate in Education at The University of Limerick and holds a Bachelor’s of Arts Degree and a Master’s Degree in Sociology from The National University

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of Ireland, Maynooth. She is a Registered General Nurse with clinical experience in orthopaedics, elderly care and operating theatre nursing. She is experienced in teaching qualitative research, professional issues and reflection using poetry as an educational tool. Elaine Handley is Professor of Writing and Literature at SUNY Empire State College. She has published poetry and fiction in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Handley’s most recent chapbook of poetry is Letters to My Migraine and she is completing a novel, Deep River, about the Underground Railroad in Upstate New York. Erik G. Hemming, Senior Lecturer in Languages and Communication at the Åland Islands, University of Applied Sciences in Finland. Having lived and worked in more than ten countries I have a passion for communication across languages and cultures (national, regional, professional, generation, gender, etc.). The poem was written when watching students sit an exam. Danielle Izzo is an academic advisor in the ASAP Program and adjunct lecturer in the English department at Queensborough Community College. She holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English literature from St. John’s University and the City University of New York. Her research interests include “otherness” as it relates to race and gender as well as Lacanian and post-Lacanian theories of language acquisition and rhetoric. She resides in Queens, New York her husband. Murray Jennings, Head of Broadcasting, (Senior Lecturer) WAAPA @ Edith Cowan University 1995 – 2005 (retired). Murray Jennings worked in Australian radio stations for many years as a writer, producer, music presenter and newsreader. He also wrote for music magazines. He has had numerous poems and short stories published in journals and anthologies and has won several awards. A book of poems and short fiction was shortlisted for the 2007 W.A. Premier’s Awards and a novel manuscript was shortlisted for the 2012 T.A.G. Hungerford Award. After working as Broadcast Trainer with an Aboriginal radio station, he was Head of Broadcasting at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth for ten years. Gunhild Jensen is a German language instructor at the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Saint Peter’s University, Jersey City, New Jersey, USA and an instructor of English language, writing and

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literature. Gunhild grew up in Denmark where she also taught foreign language courses to a great variety of students. She considers her international teaching experience a great inspiration in her life and work. Gunhild also has experience as an editor and translator of academic writing. Hershman John is Navajo—born for the Deer Spring People and the Bitter Water People, and a full time English faculty member at Phoenix College. He received his BA in English and MFA in Creative Writing, both from Arizona State University. His works have been widely published: Arizona Highways, Flyway-A Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Journal of Navajo Education, Puerto del Sol, Water-Stone Review, Arizona Republic, O Taste and See: Food Poems, A Face to Meet the Faces, The Classic Treasury of Childhood Wonders… The University of Arizona Press published his first collection of poems entitled, I Swallow Turquoise for Courage. Rae Desmond Jones was born In Broken Hill NSW, Australia in 1941. He has published five volumes of poetry, two novels and a volume of short stories. He has been a politician and troublemaker for much of his life, and intends to continue his literary and troublesome activities into the future. Angela Masterson Jones, Assistant Director of Communications, College Editor, and Staff Adviser of Eckerd Review, Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida. Angela graduated from Eckerd College in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing with High Honors, Honors Program, and the Excellence in Creative Writing Award. Her poetry and prose have received numerous prizes, appearing in such places as American Poetry Anthology, Broken Kisses, Eckerd Review, The Lyric, New Millennium Writings, Sabal, Sanctuary, Saw Palm, Tampa Review Online, and Writer’s Digest. Eckerd College teaches its first-year students an interdisciplinary two-course core sequence titled Human Experience. Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a well-known Australian poet, scholar and visual artist, and Professor of English at the University of Macau, where he has taught Creative Writing and Literature for the last fourteen years. Volumes of his poetry have been published in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Swedish, Indonesian and Filipino languages. The most recent of Kit Kelen’s dozen English language poetry books is China Years – New and Selected Poems. His next volume of poems Scavengers Season is being published by Puncher and Wattman in 2014. Kelen has published

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About the Authors

two scholarly volumes about poetry: Poetry, Consciousness, Community (Rodopi 2009) and City of Poets – Exploring Macao Poetry Today (ASM, 2009). Kelen’s theoretical study of national songs, Anthem Quality was published in 2014 by Intellect Press in the UK and the University of Chicago Press. Kit Kelen is Literary Editor for Postcolonial Text. Jennifer Lagier, PhD. Instructional Librarian, Monterey Peninsula College, and Systems Technology Librarian/Instructor, Hartnell College (retired). Jennifer has published nine books of poetry as well as in a variety of literary magazines and peer-reviewed journals. Her latest book, Camille Vérité, was just published by FutureCycle Press and is available on Amazon.com. She earned her Ph.D. and Ed.S. from Nova Southeastern University, M.A. from California State University, Stanislaus, M.L.I.S. from University of California, Berkeley. She taught with California Poets in the Schools, Modesto Junior College, California State University, Monterey Bay, Hartnell College and Monterey Peninsula College. Currently, she co-edits the Homestead Review. Ronna J Levy is an Assistant Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College, the City University of New York (CUNY). She also serves as the Co-Director of the Developmental English program. In addition to teaching, administering a program, and writing, Ronna wrote and performs her one-woman show, “’This Gonna Be on the Test, Miss?” in various theater festivals around the country. Ronna holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on the Basic Writer; an MFA in creative writing/poetry, studying with Allen Ginsburg; and a BA in communication studies with a minor in theater. Ashley Lister is the author of several novels, short stories and articles, an occasional performance poet, and a higher education lecturer at Blackpool and Fylde College specialising in Creative Writing. He is currently studying toward a PhD. Michael Kgomotso Masemola is the 2014 Recipient of the Unisa Chairperson of Council’s Excellence Awards. Besides publishing the edited volume Strategies of Representation in Auto/Biography (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) in May 2014, he has also published in the Web of Science Journal of African Cultural Studies, Vol. 24(1), 2012 on the Worldliness of the Wilderness text, as well as on the nomos of memory in Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom inCritical African Studies, Vol. 5, (2), 2013, thus adding to locally published accredited articles on “transculturation

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and the Affirmation of Africa the Black Atlantic Assemblage” in Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa Vol 11(1) 2014. Jill Marie McSweeney, MA, PhD(c), Graduate Teaching Associate, Centre for Learning and Teaching, Dalhousie University. Jill is currently completing her Interdisciplinary PhD at Dalhousie University, where she is examining the impact of nature-based learning environments on student health and wellbeing. Peter Meinke, Professor Emeritus, Eckerd College. He directed the Writing Workshop at Eckerd College for 27 years. He has published over 20 books, including 8 in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, most recently Lucky Bones (2014). His poems and stories have appeared the The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, and many other journals. His book, The Piano Tuner, received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. He has been writer-in-residence in dozens of schools and universities, including Davidson, Hamilton, Emory, UNC/Greensboro, Wichita, Old Dominion and the U. of Hawaii. James A. Mello, Franciscan University of Steubenville. Jim currently serves in a dual role at Franciscan University contributing to the academic and financial functions of the University. He earned his doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Hartford. His research interests include income inequality, psychological capital and leadership, and the role of technology in broadening access to teaching and learning. He has been a Summer Fellow of the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University and a National Data Institute Fellow. Jim and his wife Denise reside in Steubenville, Ohio with their five children. Lucy Michael, Lecturer in Sociology, University of Ulster, has lectured in higher education both in the UK and Hong Kong for 11 years. Her research on racism, as well as her engagement activities in the wider community, commonly employ visual and narrative methods. However she rarely shares her creative writing about teaching with anyone, its usual purpose being therapeutic rather than artistic. Erica Vernold Miller, Assistant Professor of Inclusive Education and Inclusive Early Childhood/Elementary Education Program Director at Cazenovia College, Cazenovia, NY. Erica Vernold Miller’s research primarily focuses on inclusive educational practices, child development, multicultural literacy, nontraditional family structures, intellectual

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downplaying, and resiliency theory. She is credited with coining the term "intellectual downplaying" and creating the Intellectual Downplaying Research Hub (www.intellectualdownplaying.com). She is also the author of the first large scale intellectual downplaying research study and serves as the CEO of Professor Patty Cake Consulting, L.L.C., a full service educational consulting company located in Syracuse, NY. Shannon Morreira, Lecturer, Humanities Education Development Unit, University of Cape Town. I am a social anthropologist with an interest in education and the politics of knowledge production. After completing my PhD in social anthropology, I started working as a lecturer on an extended degree program at the University of Cape Town. My students often find the university to be an alienating place, so in the courses I teach I try to use material that will resonate with their identities, and allow them to challenge the contemporary distribution of power in South Africa, which remains a deeply unequal society despite the end of Apartheid. Laura Morrison is a sessional instructor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ontario, Institute of Technology. She teaches Information & Communications Technology to primary/junior and intermediate/senior teacher candidates. She is also involved in a variety of education research studies investigating the intersection of digital technologies and improvements in student literacy rates and overall academic achievement. Her favorite ways to communicate are through poetry, narrative and image. Charmayne Mulligan, Ph.D., Department Chair, Davenport University. Charmayne has watched the passing of more than forty seasons from the front of the classroom, teaching primarily composition and professional writing. She has been at Davenport University since 2006, and has been the chair of the Department of English and Communications since 2011. She completed degrees at Western Michigan University, East Tennessee State University, and Florida Atlantic University. When not lecturing, grading papers, or helping students with research, she enjoys spending time with her family. Rich Murphy has been associate professor at several colleges and universities for 27 years. Currently, he is adjunct professor at Massachusetts College of Art. His credits include books, Americana Prize Americana 2013 winner his third book by The Institute for American Studies and Popular Culture, Voyeur 2008 Gival Press Poetry Award, and

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The Apple in the Monkey Tree 2007 (Codhill Press); and chapbooks, Great Grandfather (Pudding House Press), Family Secret (Finishing Line Press), Hunting and Pecking (Ahadada Books), Rescue Lines (Right Hand Pointing), Phoems for Mobile Vices (BlazeVox) and Paideia (Aldrich Press). Mark O’Hara is currently Associate Dean (Student Learning Experience) in the Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences at Birmingham City University in the UK. His interests include widening participation in Higher Education, inclusive practice, innovation in learning and teaching and student feedback. He attended a creative writing staff development workshop in 2010 as a confirmed sceptic and left a ‘changed man’. Kate Oxley has taught junior year Inclusion and AP English classes at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis, IN for five years. She is a graduate of Ball State University. Her contribution "I was Taught to Teach" was written during her time working with the National Writing Project. She lives in the Indianapolis area with her fiance Shawn and their bulldog puppy, Grindel. Sylvia Petter, Academic Editor, Department of Education, University of Vienna, is Australian and lives in Vienna, Austria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2009) and has published five collections of short stories: The Past Present (2001), Back Burning (2007), Mercury Blobs and Consuming the Muse – erotic tales (both 2013), and Geflimmer der Vergangenheit (2014). She was Co-Director Vienna for the 2014 13th International Conference on the Short Story in English. The poem, “The English Lesson”, was inspired by her experience teaching English to adults for university matriculation. Robyn Louise Philip is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Creative Industries at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. The focus of her thesis topic is designing for creative learning and teaching in higher education. Her background is in educational and academic design and development, elearning and distance education. Robyn’s higher education teaching experience includes English for academic purposes, educational media and methods, and higher education professional development. Robyn has masters degrees in creative writing and in distance education.

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About the Authors

Philip Porter, a retired high school and University teacher, has recently completed his MA in creative writing at the University of Sydney. He has been published in: Eucalypt (Australia), Blue Collar Review (USA), TheZenSite, Poetry Atlas, Swamp and Meniscus. Recently his poem, “Carthusian Silence” was put to music by composer Owen Salome and performed as part of Chronology Arts’ Lyrebird project. As a follow-up to his stint as “poet in residence” under the aegis of Australian Poetry Philip organises a community poetry project in a Sydney cafe featuring established and up and coming poets. Annette Priesman is an English professor at Windward Community College. She teaches literature, rhetoric and composition, and argumentative writing. Priesman is also the director of the college’s Writing Center. Her passions include gardening, glass fusing, and cycling. Patricia C. Robinson is a professor at College Teacher Training Program, Immigrant & Transitional Education, Centre for Preparatory & Liberal Studies, George Brown College, Toronto, ON, Canada. Her research areas are reflective teaching, narrative and arts-based research methods, mentoring programs, in-service teacher education, and professional learning communities. Her teaching areas are in-service teacher education, reflective teaching, English communications and English as a Second Language. She has previously published poetry in Whetstone (published by University of Lethbridge, Alberta). Kabini Sanga, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Education at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He grew up on a tiny Pacific Islands coral atoll in the Solomon Islands archipelago where he learnt to fish daily, using indigenous methods of fishing. He went to schools in the Solomon Islands and universities in Fiji and Canada. As an educator, Kabini has taught in schools and universities in numerous countries including Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kingdom of Tonga, Fiji, Canada and New Zealand. Kabini is a mentor to many emerging leaders in the Pacific region. Martin T Sedgley, Head of Effective Learning Service (ELS), Bradford University Faculty of Management and Law. My role for the last 7 years has been to enable our faculty’s students to maximise their success: around 5000 management and law students worldwide. ELS provides academic resources, workshops and 1-1 support for both on-site and distance learners. My research and pedagogic interests particularly focus on

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innovative ways to support our international students from over 50 countries, who are faced with a major transition into the UK HE system from their previous educational cultures. Outside work, my passions are family, creative writing, self-development, outdoor activity, travel and wild nature. Noel Sloboda is a former high school teacher and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of English at Penn State York, where he has won awards for both teaching and advising. He is the author of two poetry collections as well as a book about Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein. Kathryn Sutherland is an award-winning teacher and researcher who currently serves as Associate Dean in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand. With a teaching and research background in academic/faculty development, she is co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development. Kathryn has performed her poetry on the experiences of early career academics at several international conferences and believes that poetry offers a different way for the voices of research participants to be heard. Peter Charles Taylor is Professor of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) Education at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. He has worked in Australian universities for three decades, specialising in the transformative professional development of teachers. His multi-paradigmatic research approach enables researchers to use artsbased methods to help re-vision their roles in preparing young people for the complex, contested and confusing terrain of the 21st Century. He is deeply committed to counter-balancing the dehumanising ideology of economic rationalism currently dominating higher education. Peter’s humanistic vision for teacher education involves a multi-disciplinary perspective that integrates the Arts and Sciences. Mimi Thebo writes for children, adults and young adults. Her work has been published by Harper Collins, Random House USA, Alison & Busby and Walker Books. Her novel for children, Wipe Out, was adapted for a Bafta-winning film by the BBC. Her books have been translated into nine languages. Her short stories have been read on Radio Four, and illustrated in light against the Shell Building on London's South Bank. She has also published poetry and journalism. Born in America, Mimi lives and works in England. She lectures in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University,

182

About the Authors

where her research interests concern the narrative voice and subject development. P. L. Thomas, Associate Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He is currently a column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English) and series editor for Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Sense Publishers). He co-edited James Bladwin: Challenging Authors (Sense, 2014). His teaching and scholarship focus on literacy and the impact of poverty on education, as well as confronting the political dynamics influencing public education in the U.S. N. N. Trakakis is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Australian Catholic Philosophy. He works primarily in the philosophy of religion, and his publications in this area include The God Beyond Belief (Springer, 2007), The End of Philosophy of Religion (Continuum, 2008), and (as editor, with Graham Oppy) The History of Western Philosophy of Religion, vols 1-5 (Acumen, 2009). He has also edited Southern Sun, Aegean Light: Poetry of Second-Generation Greek-Australians (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2011), and has published several collections of poetry, the most recent being From Dusk to Dawn. Danielle Valenilla, Academic Technology Specialist, Adjunct Professor, Butler University. Danielle is a former high school English and English as a New Language teacher. Her work now is dedicated to educating preservice teachers, writing grants for student engagement, and training faculty on the effective integration of academic technology. She is a teacher consultant with the Hoosier site of the National Writing Project and is in pursuit of becoming a Google Educator. Outside of education, Danielle is a writer and an advocate for V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. Elizabeth VanDeusen-MacLeod is a faculty member in the Teacher Education and Professional Development department at Central Michigan University, teaching undergraduate and graduate literacy courses. She holds the Marie Berrell Endowed Professorship in support of literacy outreach in the community. Additionally, her work in teacher development includes over 20 years in public education in as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, and statewide grant coordinator. Throughout her career, she has worked with schools in high poverty settings and with multilingual

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and special education populations. The overarching theme in her experience, teaching, and research is how change happens in our school communities. David K. Weiser, Associate Professor, English Department, Hostos Community College, CUNY. Formerly taught at Tel-Aviv and Indiana Universities. Author of Mind in Character: Shakespeare’s Speaker in the Sonnets (1987), and Jewish Sonnets (2000), as well as various scholarly articles. Studied violin with Ivan Galamian, chamber music with the Hungarian and Juilliard string quartets. Current interests: American poetry; poetry of the Bible. Roel Wijland is the leader of the advertising specialisation, and a regular lecturer in the Quadrangle Theatre (historic places trust class 1, 1885) at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He was a founding partner of indie agency BSUR in Amsterdam. He has his published poetic research and poems in international academic journals, and made the lyrical 'In Brutal Times', winner of the best film award at the US conference Advances in Consumer Research in 2014. He is currently editing a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management on poetics, due to appear in 2016. Jennifer Wilson was born in, and lives in Bradford, West Yorkshire, a place of libraries and charity shops brimming with good books. She works as an Academic Librarian at Leeds Beckett University Library, specialising in distance learning support, open access, and information literacy. She has always written poetry. Her favourite subjects are her family and her hometown of Bradford, both of which are full of stories. Her poems are written in one shot, and are never edited or altered, growing from the immediacy of feelings forming words in her head. Robert Edward Witmer is Professor of English, Chairperson, Department of Liberal Arts, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan. For the past 34 years, I have lived in Tokyo, Japan, with my wife Aiko. Our two children, Layla and Alex, now reside in the United States. I have taught at Sophia University since 1981. Currently I teach a course in critical thinking, as well as a course in American poetry and another in creative writing. Besides poetry, my passions include hiking, baseball, and petanque.

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About the Authors

Daniel Xerri, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Malta Junior College. Besides teaching English language and literature, Daniel conducts research on the interplay between teachers’ and students’ beliefs, and poetry pedagogy. He holds postgraduate degrees in English and Applied Linguistics, and is currently reading for a PhD in Education at the University of York. Daniel has published a string of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. In 2013, he was awarded the Terry Furlong Prize for Research by the National Association for the Teaching of English in the United Kingdom.

AUTHOR INDEX

Sandra Alcosser 2-3 Laura Apol 4-10 Andrew Bailes 11 Luci Gorell Barnes 12-13 Susan Cherie Beam 14 Brian Beatty 15-16 Dennis Ken Bideshi 17 Amanda M. Bigler 18-19 Patrick Blessinger 20-22 William (Bill) Edgar Boyd 23-26 Eva Wennås Brante 27-28 Matt Bryden 29-31 Lori Beth Caress 32 John Casquarelli 33-34 Dadi Chen 35-36 Paula Marie Coomer 37 Marie Cook 38 Maria Dolores Costa 39 Barbara Cozza 40 James Curran 41 Chad Davidson 42 Robert H. Deluty 43-44 Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi 45 Jonathan Porter Eastman 46 Donna M. Elkins 47-48 Nathan Elliot 49-50 Meg Eubank 51-52 Steve Evans 53 Roberta Fabiani 54 Sandy Feinstein 55 Beverly Fenig 56-58 Gregory Fraser 59-60 Alice Friman 61-62 Alice B. Fogel 63-64 Louis Gallo 65 Frani Geiger 66 Terry Gifford 67-69 David Gordon Goddard 70-71 Norma Walrath Goldstein 72

Richard K. Gordon 73-74 Alisa Gordaneer 75-76 Eimile Máiréad Green 77-78 Sinead Hahessy 79-81 Elaine Handley 82 Erik G. Hemming 83-84 Danielle Izzo 85-87 Murray Jennings 88 Gunhild Jensen 89 Hershman John 90-92 Rae Desmond Jones 93-94 Angela Masterson Jones 95-96 Christopher (Kit) Kelen 97-98 Jennifer Lagier 99-101 Ronna J Levy 102 Ashley Lister 103-104 Michael Kgomotso Masemola 105 Jill Marie McSweeney 106 Peter Meinke 107-109 Jim Mello 110 Lucy Michael 111 Erica Vernold Miller 112-113 Shannon Morreira 114 Laura Morrison 115-116 Charmayne Mulligan 117 Rich Murphy 118 Mark O’Hara 119-121 Kate Oxley 122-123 Sylvia Petter 124 Robyn Philip 125 Philip Porter 126 Annette Priesman 127-129 Patricia C. Robinson 130-131 Kabini Sanga 132 Martin T Sedgley 133-134 Noel Sloboda 135 Kathryn Sutherland 136-140 Peter Charles Taylor 141-142 Mimi Thebo 143-144

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Author Index

P. L. Thomas 145-147 N. N. Trakakis 148 Danielle Valenilla 149-151 Elizabeth VanDeusen-MacLeod 152-153 David K. Weiser 154

Roel Wijland 155-158 Jennifer Wilson 159-160 Robert Edward Witmer 161 Daniel Xerri 162

TITLE INDEX

A Note To You, My Student 17 A Sonnet to Young Graduates 36 Absent on Manus Island 125 Academia is losing its appeal 136 Along the Way 73 An Ode to Emily Dickinson 22 An Ode to Teachers 20 An Uncommon Lens 32 Answers 111 Canned Pineapple Slices 90 Cheat 59 Class Time for the Arts 118 CLASSROOM – DAY – LIFE: GO 152 Classrooms 79 College Hallway on Tuesday 47 Community College Incident Log 101 Critical Thinking 161 Decline and Fall 93 develop the albatross in your story 33 Difference 45 Dragon Dance 4 Dust 38 English 101 102 Erinyes 49 Exam Conditions 30 Exam Room 11 Eyes 110 Fear and Loathing in the Academy 141 For all the Darren’s in the World 14 Freshman 44 Grading Papers 54 Graduation 121 HALLS IN OUR BLOOD 37 Have I Told You How Much I Love You Today? 127

I Rise 149 I was taught to teach 122 In Defense of Poetry 42 In the Quadrangle Theatre 155 In the Sorbonne 69 Learning to Read 63 Lessons 43 Librarian 159 LOGOS 65 Lotus 7 My mission 27 National Student Survey 119 Night Computer Science Class 99 Notebook Tsunami: Unsettling the teaching experience 23 Ode to Ed-u-cate 40 Okay, Kid, I’ve Had it 55 On The Success Treadmill 138 OPUS POCUS 88 PAPERS 2 Pedagogy over Poetry 96 Poem Translated from the Global Study of Indigenous Names of the Americas 92 Poetry Analysis 52 Poetry Lessons 162 Poetry Workshop – with Knives 53 Reading "The Yellow Wallpaper": 58 Recitation 9 Romeo + Juliet 103 Rubbing Alcohol 15 Seasonal Instruction Disorder 117 She goes to pray 12 Slanguage 85 Split Ends 57 Spoken Word? 115 Standard error 70 Star-crossed in English Nine 135

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Title Index

STILL LIFE 82 Stone upon stone upon stone upon stone 130 Stymied 126 Tai Chi Teacher 133 Tattered Shoes 21 Teacher 41 TEACHING A SON TO READ 75 The Abacus and the Alphabet 18 The Adjunct 56 the anarchy of poetry 95 the archeology of white people 145 The Boy in the Black Leather Jacket 61 The Cities of the World are Waiting 83 the creative writing teacher repents 97 The dean 72 The Dilemma 66 The English Lesson 124 The ESL Classroom 51 The Example 29

The Fountain 154 the kindness school 147 The Late Assignment 114 The Making of Superheroes 106 The Old Professor 81 The Old Professor 107 The Old-Time Adjunct’s Office 58 The Online Instructor’s Lament 46 The Seminar 112 The Student 89 The Swansea Pantoum 143 The Teacher 108 The Teaching Profession 132 The Test 39 Time for Being 148 To the 110th Anniversary of Xi’an Jiaotong University 35 Trust lost under an Algorithmic Tree 105 Voodoo, Central Park 3 Word Choice 77 Wordsworth Winter School, Rydal Hall, Grasmere 67