Class. Not many left this term. Am I upset. A little. I’m here, though, and I’m moving… They don’t care, the department, the full-timers, the administration and certainly not those shiny high-tower pig trustees and the “board” they form. Getting to the office this morning I can only think about that, even this morning when both kids were rioting and protesting everything around them and in life all I could see was the classroom last night. Going over how Black Boy ended and what narrative means, tossing ideas from one side of the classroom to the other. That’s my place, but now not. And not the physical of it, but what it embodies, the classroom—thought and freedom, liberation and ascension of self and more toward what you want from life. It’s more than learning for me, more than reading a book and answering questions, more than essay assignments. It is the classroom, but not. Not at all. It’s where you feel your story deciding itself and with you certain directions. No idea what I’m saying, post-kid upheaval, but I’m seeing them get older and myself get older and everything moving forward, and moving faster than I am right now, this morning. So…. The students, their notes, this one student taking notes and highlighting in different highlighter shades, little marks as to bring her attention to one point and another. I’m more a student than them, I often feel. This morning I feel like I’m behind in a class, or something. Like I need to make up something, get credit for something I’ve missed. Is it not having a class? I mean, does it bother me that much? In a word, yes. But then, no. I’m relieved I won’t have to go to campus and walk down that outdated hallway and to the conference room that looks and smells and feels and then again smells like something from the 80’s.
When I saw myself teaching, in high school when taking Mr. Sullivan’s Creative Writing course, I didn’t see this. The adjunct thing. I promised myself I wouldn’t write about this anymore, but this morning I’m wondering why… why can’t I have what I envisioned? You can. Just with different framing, I guess. I need to assemble self, snap out of this, snap out of it quicker than quick. I need to re-write this present, put self in the classroom—What if the students were reading this? I think. What would they think of the character, Mike, what he’s feeling now? What if I were reading, while I write about me reading but then more a reader than the present writer? Clear, Mike needs to shift a few masses and belief movements. Be more free and wild, FREE in his writings, teachings. And just ‘cause you’re not at an institution anymore does NOT conclude your teaching, academic, thoughtful life. I’ve said all this to myself before but not with this sharpness of zeal.
Before beginning my workday, typing here in the breakroom as I often do, I see the syllabus. The day, a class. Hours 1 through 8, and past. What happens in each? I’m not going to write it out like an actual syllabus, but in sight I have certain points I have to hit…. Shit, more of the promissory notes. Just be in moment, retreat into writing so you don’t have to retreat as the JC is. And yes, they are the ones retreating, not me. They don’t have a section for me, and that’s the push I needed. To fall further into these pages and offer what I offer to students with more encompassing edge. Getting caught up.
Richard Wright, and reading his book with students, has reminded me of the self, and what it can do for the character, how things can be reshaped when you request such of self. However many meetings I have remaining with English 100, I’m set to spring into a more rewarding and exploratory angle of my book, books. My frames and stories and settings, senses. Everything around you is there not so much for a reason, but for furthered reasoning and so you can punctuate and self-prove in your own reasoning. So, there’s no more scheduled classes for me. So what. I schedule my own. MY, OWN. The way I speak in the classroom, now, will be the way I write, the way I note and decide more knowledge for Self. SRJC will determine NOTHING for me. Why did I ever feel upset about not having a class, ever? This isn’t the first time. Past terms, I’d nearly, well, not so much beg but much closer to begging for assignments than I’d ever want to be. Calling and asking if something had opened up, if there were any sections that somehow I could fit into my, at the time, wine industry life. Now, at the tech company, my schedule is more predictable and more aligned with ubiquitous work models and weeks than the wind world. Means, I can only have a single night section. There isn’t one, and I move on. That simple. No more thinking about it. Only notes on today, and what I want to learn, what ideas I want to share. And that’s how I’ve always seen “teaching”, as a genuine and humble sharing of ideas and not some tight accordance to a course outline and reaching a word count for sakes of reaching it, a number, a count, a contrived demand.
We need to see ourselves as answer mills, that we can get to destinations with principle autonomy. That overthought and wondering which way to next turn and whose permission do we land to move…. Just stop. Stop. You are your best educator, your most excited and lively, hungry student. This whole matter with the Junior College is only a matter as I’ve made it a matter. What if I stopped? What if I halted? What if you just didn’t give the momentum to what you do? What if you saved it all for yourself? All the angst would be axed, all the stress would stop. So this morning, let’s promise each other, to catalyze our own revolt, our own re-write. For ourselves. No department, no office, no institution, nothing on outside. Here we are, and we move.
(4/23/19)