Maggie_Response to On Austrian Soil Part I

[Sondra Perl]

#745

In the introduction to On Austrian Soil, Sondra writes: “a writing classroom offers those willing to grapple with unsettling issues a new place to stand, a place where prejudice can wither and empathy can be nourished. There is not teacher’s guide for this journey: the road to dialogue us rocky and full of pitfalls” (xv).
For me, one unsettling issue that my writing has been dancing around all semester is teaching. Teaching keeps coming up in my in-class writing , but it never seems to make it into final drafts. There is so much about teaching–about being a teacher–that I do not understand and that I do not feel comfortable talking about. Reading On Austrian Soil helped me to focus a little bit, both on my anxiety and on my reluctance to speak about it.
One of the main themes in On Austrian Soil is the issue of, as Sondra’s student Andrea puts it, being “a full human being in the classroom” (7). I am so confused about being a full human being and a teacher at the same time that I hardly know where to begin, so I will simply write down two contrasting experiences that I am not ready to analyze yet.

Before I started teaching–before I even arrived in New York to start my first year at the GC–I had to take the online courses on violence in the workplace and sexual harassment. I think that these are mandated for all state employees, although frankly I am not sure; the amount of paperwork I filled out that summer left me uninterested in sorting out what was for what was for which. Anyways, in the sexual harassment course there was a section about talking about sex in the workplace; the language was noncommittal, but the takeaway was, don’t do it, especially if you are in a position of authority, because there is no way to know if those around you are comfortable with this sort of behavior. A year later, as I was standing in front of the first class I had ever taught explaining the consummation of Maghan kon Fata’s marriage to Sogolon in Sundiata, I remember that part of the course and have a moment of helpless bewilderment. Because I am a teaching literature; It is impossible to teach literature and not talk about sex.
Of course, I get what the online course was aiming at. I also get that it was not designed with Shakespeare or the African epic in mind. But those online training programs were also the only real instructions that I recieved before I started teaching. What I took away from them was, never be a full human being in the workplace/classroom.

On my first day of teaching, I was so nervous I almost couldn’t walk into the room. I stood in the hall outside and tried not to be sick. I had an annotated syllabus, an introductory writing assignment, and a handout to talk about. I knew I was underprepared, but I had really tried to do all the things that the books said I should do. I just hadn’t been able to because I didn’t know how yet. In order to learn how, I had to walk into that room and start the class.
That morning I had put on clothes that I thought a “professor” would wear and put my hair up because, for some reason, I thought that wearing it down would be too informal. I had also decided not to tell my students how new I was to teaching (that I had spent more time falling off of hay trucks than I had in front of a classroom) or that I was a student too, because I was sure that they would not respect me if they knew how inexperienced I was. I had, in fact, resolved to leave most of myself at home that morning.
Luckily, when I finally got up the courage to walk into that classroom, my ignorance of pedagogical method protected me from my own good intentions. I didn’t know anything about judging classroom dynamics, but I did know about gauging an audience’s reaction to a performance. Within minutes, it became clear that my carefully constructed professorial persona was a box office disaster. My audience was, to put it mildly, not engaged. So I ditched it (although I liked the costume so much that I ended up adopting it as part of my own wardrobe, wearing it to weddings, Christmas parties, birthdays, dates; it turns out that I was made for blazers and pencil skirts).
There is a certain freedom that comes with a failed performance. That is one of the reasons for the superstition about a bad dress rehearsal: anything that happens after a stage flop is a step up. So I took a risk that I usually don’t take and went with the Uta Hagen method: I played me on stage. It was a lucky choice, because the students immediately perked up. My strategy to hold their interest without being familiar with the pedagogical tools turned out to be being the quirkiest, most enthusiastic, most ready-to-laugh, most present version of myself that I could be.

[Sondra Perl]

#760

These are such great questions, Maggie, and I am so glad you are raising them. I have taken those ethics surveys — and those scenarios you need to read about and then figure out the right ethical response. But I think they are trying to focus on sexual harassment in the workplace and not how to teach sensitively about sensitive topics. I don’t see how you can teach literature without discussing values and choices. That doesn’t mean a professor has to talk about his or her sex life. But if sex is part of the book or poem or play, how can you not address what it means, how the characters deal with it, what’s hurtful, what’s joyful, etc.? Same for abuse or trauma. How can you exclude these and student responses to them in a discussion of literature?

I don’t necessarily say a lot about myself in my Lehman classrooms. It is, admittedly, different when teaching adults, some of whom may or may not be teachers. But on the first day of class, I tend to let my students know how much I love teaching, how much I look forward to creating the class with them, how much of what we do will, I hope, lead to honest discussions, their growth, and, not incidentally, fun. When my mother was dying this fall, I ended up letting my freshmen know. In part, it felt wrong to pretend that everything was fine; in part, I had the feeling that I would need to cancel at least one class…but more than that, I wanted to be able to be real with them — and to have them with me through the process. I didn’t dwell on it; but they were part of what sustained me last fall. Again, knowing just how much to say takes some experience. But I would encourage you to trust yourself as you did above — and then to realize that the classroom is about them — their responses — their ideas much more than it is about your performance. 🙂 Enough said for now.

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