I was an adjunct professor for five years and taught an introduction to the primal narratives in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As it turned out, for some students it was also a writing boot camp.
I was not and am not a teacher, at least not in the formal Education system. I am a teacher within my own profession — religion — but that is a far cry from anyone professionally trained to teach a comprehensive subject matter. I teach soft stuff, like the journey to open the heart and mind, and the imagination, to the ordinary sacred. But the rigorous study and discipline of helping students learn how to learn, and then pouring into them a specific, ordered, and defined content of information, well that is just not something I was ever taught to do. Despite that handicap, I tried to teach my students how to write.
The first semester I taught it was immediately obvious many of my students did not know how to write. Their essays, even brief ones, were full of misspellings, grammatical errors, and just plain incomprehensible expressions. It caused a bit of a crisis for me personally. You see, I went to college without knowing how to write, too.
I was warned at the end of my first semester in college that I was in danger of flunking out. Then a sociology professor grabbed hold of me. She demanded I learn how to write. She was wonderfully fierce and intimidating, and willing to spend as much time as it took to see me get it right. Assignments I turned in came back over and over and over again as she demonstrated what I was doing wrong and what I needed to learn.
I knew that in my part-time teaching gig, a second job and with four children at home, that I could not be as available to my students as that wonderful sociology professor was to me. But I could do something. So I reduced all assignments to five hundred word essays, the length of this column. I figured that in their post-graduate jobs no one would ask them for a research paper but they would have to write emails succinctly. Even a five hundred word email would be too long in most jobs. I wasn’t an English teacher but I could send them to the writing lab students had available for tutoring almost 24/7, and I sent them there over and over and over again. I’m not very fierce but I tried to be demanding.
It is unlikely I saved anyone’s future the way that professor saved mine. But just maybe, in addition to revealing the amazing and profound similarities surrounding Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad, some of those students learned to write a little better.
Now I marvel that publishers have deemed my two novels and a collection of poems and essays worthy and potentially profitable enough to publish. One college professor took a failing kids by the scruff of the neck and insisted that he learn something, not even the content of her field of study. Don’t all of us have that one seemingly random person who came along to change our lives in some quirky way? And doesn’t a river of gratitude flow endlessly from our memory of him or her?
You teach the ‘soft stuff’? Please, brother, I’ve been attending your Sunday sermons all through the pandemic. If that is the soft stuff I hear facing the hard stuff!
Maybe that was a little too self-deprecating?
I think you’ve got it now, Cam.
Tim
🙂
Cam – I found teaching writing to feel like nothing short of teaching a stone to breathe. Mine were community college students, most of whom had not had any teacher (since junior high) approach them with instruction regarding “the written word.” (I know because I asked during Day One’s version of getting acquainted; you know, the one where you start out asking them what their soap opera name would be using the street name of their first home – that sort of thing.) Hopefully there were one or two young people who found my chatter and critiques transformative. Probably not, however. You, my brilliant friend, were one of the best experiences Canisius had to offer – and that is probably, no definitely – the actual case. Stay well.
There were, and I’m sure are, an awful lot of good professors at Canisius. You sing my praises more loudly than I deserve, but thank you!
We all need someone, who, at some point in our lives, demands a lot of us, someone who can see a glimpse of our potential. Thank you, God!
No kidding! Sounds like you are grateful to someone too. Thanks for commenting. Cam
Professor Barrier?
Gladys Kwaksa (not sure I’m spelling it right). I would have named her but couldn’t find any listing on WC site. But I did see a photograph of a recent class reunion carrying “Not just for chicks” flag!
Well Done Cameron. There several who I think of that helped be “more” along the way. And this article makes me think of them once more. Thank you.
They smile from wherever they are as we hold them warmly in our thoughts.