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In several columns I filed as the 2002 visiting professor at Angelo State University in
San Angelo, Texas, I expressed a renewed love of teaching. Several readers, two of them
university professors, asked me to explain the transformation from loathing classroom teaching
to loving it again.
I resigned as an English and journalism professor nine years ago to write full time for the
St. Petersburg Times. I returned to the classroom after Angelo State invited me to teach
literature and journalism last semester.
A Ball State University professor, who reads my column online, asked: "What happened during the
nine years you were away? What renewed you? Did the kids change? Did the system change? What?"
The students did not change. They are basically the same: conservative and not prone to take
political and intellectual resks. Oh, sure, fewer of them major in business, but they are
still focused on makeing a lot of money. No, the system did not change. Academic politics are
academic politics.
What had changed was Bill Maxwell.
After nine years of being away from the classroom and writing for a living, my attitude
toward learning had fundamentally changed. I did not discover this fact until I started to
write syllabuses for courses I would teach. As I outlined the course objectives, developed
assignments and compiled reading lists, I realized that I wanted my students to learn.
At first blush, a teacher wanting students to learn sounds like the obvious goal. But that goal is not
always obvious. During my proevious 18 years of teaching, I automatically followed the
syllabuses to the letter, tested students and handed out grades.
The truth is that I often reached my goals without bringing my students along.
Over the years, I have had professors and colleagues who did the same, who were great at delivering
the material but who did not check to see if their student were learning. Brilliant lectures,
pop quizzes and difficult final examinations do not always add up to a positive learning experience for
students. I made an effort at Angelo State to help my students learn. In fact, I put their
learning ahead of my rules and deadlines.
Here is how I discovered that I had changed: One afternoon, a young woman came to my office because
she had made the grade of D on a personal response essay aboue Celie, the protagonist in the novel
The Color Purple. I gave her a D because she had failed to understand the Mr. _______, Celie's brutal
husband, had become a sympathetic figure in the end.
As we talked, I realized that this student, white and 19, was totally unfamiliar with black culture - even literature - and
had no background to understand the sentiment of forgiveness among blacks - especially the forgiveness of a character who
had been dehumanized.
Initially, the student's ignorance exhausted me, and I was growing angry. I did not recall when
it happened, but an enlightened voice told me that the young woman's ignorance
was a thing to be respected. It was not to be denigrated. As a professor, I was experiencing a teaching moment,
a time when the teacher must apprehend and take advantage of the viability of ignorance, the blank slate, as it were.
As the student listened to my analysis, she gradually understood that Mr. ______ had become sympathetic.
I came to understand that effective teaching and learning occur when professor approach their work as
scientist approach their work: Scientist respect ignorance so much so that they do not go out
to confirm what they already know. Instead, they go out to find out what they do not know.
Students, mostly teenagers, do not come to the academy to confirm what they know. They arrive to
discover and to learn. An obvious truth? Perhaps. I spent my adult life learning it.
After that day with the student, teaching became a joy for me, not a chore. Each class session became a
challenge to hone ignorance into moments of moments of curiosity and opportunities to test and experiment with answers
and solutions. I now understood that teaching and learning should not be mere exercises in
reward and punishment. I found myself lecturing less and asking more quesions that led students
to their own questions, some of them profound.
I do not know if this is the best way to teach. But I learned that such a method, when used earnestly, liberates students
by putting real learning at canter stage, by removing blame and judgement from ignorance, which is nothing
more than the simple lack of knowledge.
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