Teaching, So Far

I have a new office. It’s not because I’ve done anything to deserve it, it’s because Concordia is turning into a ghost town. Those who still haunt the campus (probably myself included) are in need of something, in search of something, believe there is still some sort of work to be done, or a combination of all of it. I like to think I’m here to help with what haunts.

On Mondays my students and I have Book Club. I boil water and bring in hot chocolate, little cups of cream, and packets of instant coffee. I tell them have whatever they want, but when I was their age going to Calvin and needing to write one paper after another, I came up with the “Poor Man’s Mocha:” instant coffee, hot chocolate, maybe a dash of cinnamon, maybe a splash of milk, and boiling water.

“Don’t put the water in first,” I warn them. “It won’t mix well.”

You have to make those other ingredients dance.

We talk abut the reading I assigned the Friday before. Sometimes Joan Didion, sometimes Brian Doyle. Sometimes me. I give them each a book club job, and I was a tad nervous about this because it’s the kind of thing you do in elementary or middle school, but it turns out Harvard does this so I figured it is OK.

The times I share my writing with them, I tell them that it’s easier to refer to me as “the narrator.” It makes it easier to analyze and evaluate the essay.

“I was surprised the narrator feels sorry for Judas,” for example. “I don’t think it would’ve worked if the narrator had written that at the beginning of the essay.”

I’ve told them about metaphor and we used Julio Noboa Polanco’s “Identity” poem as practice. He’d rather be a weed than a potted plant and one of my students would rather be a knight than a princess stuck in a castle. Another one writes that she’d rather be her dad’s old wallet than a brand new one with snaps and zippers that aren’t used to being open.

To be used - that’s what they’re all trying to say. I want to be put to use.

I had a choice offices. There was one with a view of the Huron River - probably my favorite spot on campus. These days though, it’s hard to look at that water, the swans and ducks that glide along, the firepit with the wooden chairs around it, and not feel a stitch to the heart for what’s being lost; what won’t be used.

So I took this one. It faces the quad. Students- those that are left- wave to me and I wave back, happy to know them; happy they know me.

I can hear the Chapel Bells from my office, too. My first day in here, “Take My Life And Let It Be” rang out. I stopped unpacking and sat and listened. Or maybe I prayed.

My new supervisor stopped by later that day. “Will this work? Will this be OK?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her. “This will work just fine.”