Why UW-Whitewater

ALISON TOWNSEND

It is near the end of the fall semester in Creative Nonfiction, my 400-level class devoted to the exploration of the many subgenres of literary nonfiction. It's a small, astonishingly diverse class, one of my rowdiest and wildest ever. But the students are all good writers, serious about their craft and comfortable with one another, eager to talk about their work. This is the point I have worked toward all semester, the moment when, while still facilitating, carefully guiding the discussion if it begins to go off course, I can sit back, the reins loose in my hand and watch them come into their own.

Their comments are perceptive and generous. They are insightful about revision, making helpful suggestions that move the work forward without diminishing the writer as a person. Above all, they are supportive of one another. The room buzzes and hums with energy and excitement. As I look around, their faces seem to glow and I am moved by their collaboration and presence of the creative energy in the room. Tired as I am, this is the moment when I fall in love with them all over again as a class. "This is why I do it," I think to myself. For moments like this, when I see them move forward, each voice, each perspective unique and valuable, completely its own. Moments like this, along with all the others that have led up to them. Though we don't tend to talk about it as a spiritual endeavor (and I mean that in the broadest and most ecumenical sense). Teaching, especially of an art form, is holy work. Teaching writing is about soul, not technique.

Over the years, I have come to believe that the most important thing I teach is permission. The image I use to describe this is a door, one students often don't even realize they have inside them. My job is to point out the door (mostly by helping them recognize strengths they don't know they possess) and then say, "See that door there? What would happen if you walked through it?" Because of this, I tend to ask a lot of questions in my response to student work, questions intended to help them to listen to the writing, and through the act of listening to claim their voice. Our writing asks that we live in a state of constant revision, willing to work with self and material in the way a potter works with clay, collapsing it all into the wheel and beginning again when necessary.

Like writing, teaching is an act of constant revision. And, as the poet famously said, it is myself that I revise.

next Why I Teach