Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Joel Peckham

 

But there are stories that don’t have beginnings. I tell my students as I limp toward the white-board, marker in hand—ready to attack and dismantle the Freytag triangle—its neat symmetry, its infuriating geometry. I take a deep breath. Where we start is everything, all is exposition and no truths are simple as this. So “Tell me a story / In this century and moment of mania, / Tell me a story.” But where to start. And who is the story about?—Satellites

 

Exuberance carries us places we would not otherwise go—across the savannah, to the moon, into the imagination—and if we ourselves are not so exuberant we will, caught up in the contagious joy of others who are—be inclined collectively to go yonder—Kay Redfield Jamison, Exuberance: The Passion for Life

 

“Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire”—William Butler Yeats

 

 

 

          I begin to take my jacket off and then think better of it. I know I’ve started to sweat, the strong brew of nervous energy, too much coffee after a sleepless night and outright fear has gotten the better of me. Its always like this on the first day. And the fact that I know my students are more frightened of me than I of them doesn’t help much. Because I can feel that heavy responsibility of authority bearing down on me. And this year there’s more to it than normal first day jitters because these young men and women are all new to me, because its been less than year since the accident, because I don’t know which of them already knows the story, or what story has actually gotten to them, refracted and reflected in the telling until like a ray of light through shattered window glass, it has become both more and less that it is or was—variations on a theme. So I’m taking a gamble. I’m going to tell it and through the telling teach them, I hope, not only what makes a story but what makes a story matter. It will be an exercise. And the exercise will begin with the basic narrative thread: “A family is traveling in a touring van from Aqaba to Amman and they strike a sand-truck parked across the road. The mother and oldest son die. The father and younger son are injured but survive.”

          “Is this a story” I ask them. And there is silence. One student uncomfortably raises his hand. I will learn later that his name is Robert and that his father committed suicide a month before—that Robert came home to find his mother who had not lived at home for a month, sitting in the driveway, police cars on the road, yellow tape across the door. He has his story to tell but it will take him a long time to find a way to tell it.

          “It could be” he says, “I mean it’s the beginning of a story.”

          “No” Sarah interjects, it’s the end of the story” then pauses, “or maybe the middle; its part of the story, not the whole story.”

          “Is it your story?” Nick asks with a kind of insolence that is not premeditated but the product of his eagerness. I can tell he knows the answer.

          “Well that depends upon how it's told. Who else’s story could it be?” I ask

          “The mother’s.”

          “The child’s—the younger one.”

          “The driver’s.”

          I can feel them getting involved. I can also feel their anxiety. This is getting personal and they know it. And the personal is messy. We talk about point of view for a while, why its important to the purpose and theme of the story. “O.K.” I interject “so we’ve decided—first person point of view from the perspective of the father. You want me to tell it. The question now is, how to make it good--how to pull you into the story and make it matter. What else needs to be done?”

          “You need to tell us more.”

          “What do you want to know?” They ask for details, description, time of day. “So I tell you all of that, is it enough? What makes a story matter?”

          “The characters; we need to know the characters. We need to care about them.” And suddenly my story is becoming theirs—as they shape and add to it. It dawns on me, that there really is an essay here. And that I will write it. We talk about backstory, context, character development and how an artist must be selective—even when a story is true—perhaps especially when it is true. By the time we get around to pacing and larger structural issues of narrative, time has run out on us. I tell them there will be a pop quiz on the syllabus so they need to read it carefully. And they wander out into the light, sheaves of paper in hand. I want to collapse into the chair. “At least I held it together,” I think.

          As with many gambles I will only know the payoff later on. I know my students learned something about narrative, and certainly about the many terms I have written on the board. And I know that those terms will be useful both for the personal essay they will have to write and for the short story they will analyze in a two weeks. But, of course, I am hoping for more than just an expansion of their critical and creative vocabulary. I feel a twinge of guilt about making the class about myself, but I know that in doing so on this day, I may have liberated some of them to take a personal investment in the material. Over the next few months that I will have with them, I will consistently ask them to step into the work as deeply as they can, to bring what they know and what they have experienced into the learning process. I will also ask them to broaden that base of understanding—teaching them not only the mechanics of reading and writing, but opening them up to the way in which literature participates in a world of meaning. We will not only read literature but explore philosophy, history, science, music—anything that will help open a window of understanding into what we will read. I’ve learned over the years that in a classroom I am never only teaching my subject matter. The classroom is not only a space for writing and reading but for seeing and perceiving, for paying attention to the world and for actively shaping it through that interpretation. The learning process is most dynamic when readers are willing to bring something of who they to the table and when they are willing to take the risk of being moved and changed by what they read--when they are willing to get involved. And I hope I’ve modeled also, the great personal risks writers take when they place work in front of audience. Though I know I have made my students uncomfortable today, their discomfort is a creative discomfort that comes of embarrassment when anyone is faced with the deeply personal and meaningful. It is the kind of discomfort that moves us out of complacency and toward knowledge. Literature complicates our lives as does any effort to see deeply and comprehensively—it challenges us. For education is a messy, often chaotic activity and it rarely happens in an ideal setting. We learn out of struggle and confusion—as much from pain as from pleasure, sorrow as joy. And learning involves constant upheaval as the truths we thought we knew are challenged, expanded to incorporate other truths, and either affirmed or abandoned for new ways of seeing.

          My teaching philosophy comes out of the belief that the reading and writing are exuberant, dynamic, interactive and passionate activities and that this dynamism and passion is as transferable as the basic techniques of reading and writing. Learning is a shared, communal experience.

          And it is the chief joy of my life.