 |
How A New Teacher Learns from His Students |
Zinman's 14: They're in class
just for the joy of learning
of TheColumnists.com
I'm back in school. Not as a student this time. No more sitting in the last row, last seat because my name starts with "Z."
I'm up front now. I'm on the podium. I'm the teacher.
Technically, I am an "instructor" in creative writing at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C. I teach in an adult education program called the Lifelong Learning Society. My first class started last week. I think I'm learning more than the students.
In the first place, I discovered what a difference being a teacher makes. No more nightmares worrying if I'll pass a subject. Or what grade I'll get. There's nobody to call on me and say, "Zinman. We'll see if you did your homework last night. Stand up and recite the preamble to the Constitution."
No, sir, I do the calling. I give the assignments.
But here's the difference: All my students are there because they want to be. They don't come because the law says they have to go to school. They are not there to get high grades to try to get into a top college. They come for the pure joy of learning. They are students with a capital "S."
There are 14 in my class. Most are retired. They have found that education doesn't end when they leave school. It just starts. There's a lot to learn in life.
Most are in their 60s. But they are so enthusiastic and eager when they come to class, their energy level makes them seem like they are in their 20s.
That's why I gave them what may have seemed like a far-out assignment for their first homework. I told them if they had a burning desire to write something, go right ahead and do it. But I remembered that Valentine's Day--February 14--was just around the corner. So I suggested if they came up blank, they write about love.
|
speak to this Zinman fellow in Creative Writing 1A. He's making all the cute 60-year-olds stay late for what he calls 'special instruction.'" |
 |
"Everybody has a first love," I said. "But we seldom marry that person. We eventually break up and parting can be painful. However, we learn from the relationship. We become a little wiser, a little more mature. But we don't forget that special person."
And so I asked my class to write a story about someone meeting his or her first love again after the years had passed.
Nobody said a word. I thought most people would write about a subject they would choose themselves. I was wrong. Most wrote about re-discovering that first romance. They wrote in the first person. The papers were fascinating and wide-ranging.
One student wrote about finding her first love--a boy in her high school who wore blue suede shoes--via the Internet. The woman, a widow, went to a site called "Classmates.Com" and discovered he was divorced and still lived in her hometown.
She called him. They had lunch and filled in the years. But they no longer had anything in common. And so they parted again. The story ended with a wistful thought. "I wonder what happened to his blue suede shoes."
Another student began: "He took my hand. I raised his hand to my lips and kissed it quickly. He pinched me..." This "brief encounter, " the writer said, took place in their first grade class. She went on to tell about how they spent their childhood together--going to church, playing, fishing for trout in a brook that ran behind their houses.
When they grew up, they went their separate ways, married, and raised families. But the bond between them never broke. When he died, she wrote, she went to the cemetery but could not find his burial site.
No matter. She said their closeness will remain beyond the grave. "My ashes will be buried in the same cemetery just a few feet from the brook where he taught me to fish."
A third student revisited her first love in memory. She told how thrilled she was whenever she got to go to her grandparents. "I knew 'he' would be waiting." And he was, running across the road to meet her. She wrote about summers when she swung from a tire that hung from a tree and he sat on the porch steps "watching, following my every move. I could not have loved him more than I did in those perfect days."
When it was time to go, Grandmother gathered her clothes. He stood by the car. "I looked at him, choked back a tear, put my arms around his neck, said, 'I love you,' and kissed him...Diddle was my dog, and my first true love."
I'm gratified to see my students working hard every week, trying out ideas, finding new ways of putting them on paper. They bring their stories to class to read and hear what their peers have to say.
Their work will probably not find their way into "The New Yorker." But my feeling is that getting published should not be a be-all and end-all goal.
I tell my students: "You have to make writing a habit. You have to make the act of doing it--the act of creation--your goal. A real writer writes--whether he or she get published.
I tell them: "If you do that, if you write regularly, at the end of each day you will have created something of your own. And at the end of many, many days or many years, you will have something special--a body of work--something that is yours and yours alone."
©
2002 by David Zinman. The
Zinman caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The cartoon is
from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E.,
San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or David Zinman. To send an
email, click here: talkback@thecolumnists.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |