Why We Teach
I’m cleaning.
Yesterday was the first day of my sabbatical. In a move that is 100% on brand for me, I spent the morning cleaning my office (I’m on team “organized space, organized brain). That’s when I dusted off the picture above. That’s my dear friend and University of Oregon colleague Joanna Goode, a much younger me, and Mike Rose. I think the universe was interceding at that moment, as I needed a shot of reinvigoration as to why I teach. And in that picture, I found it.
A story for you.
For folks new to Mike Rose, he was/is an absolute legend at UCLA. An expert in writing, Mike taught doc students how to get their words on paper. He was widely published and wrote the now classic books Possible Lives and Lives on the Boundary. He wore a standard uniform of jeans and cowboy boots, had a seriously salty mouth, and loved, loved his students. When I was a young doc student, I enrolled in Mike Rose’s writing course. On the first day of class, I walked into his office a few hours before we started. Our conversation went something like this:
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Kerri: Mike, I’m going to drop your course. I can’t write.
Mike: What’s up kiddo?
Kerri: I am over my head. I know it already. I am just going to drop the course and save myself the embarrassment.
He asked me some questions about my worries and past experiences with writing.
Mike: Ok. I understand if you need to. Let’s give it a go though, like a test drive. Why don’t you come to the class, check it out, and decide how to proceed after? *
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I went to class. I stayed. My first publications came from his courses. I enrolled in a second course with Mike later in my doc program. And when I left UCLA, I continued to write articles and then publish a book. Fast forward to today, and I am on sabbatical. To write a second book.
It is not hyperbole to say that I am a writer because of Mike. I was 100% sure as a grad student that I couldn’t write myself out of a paper bag. And at that moment in his office, Mike didn’t know either. I was a new student to him. I wonder what he saw.
In his courses, Mike taught me techniques to build interest, to explain myself plainly, and to guide a reader through my logic. I still actively use those strategies today. But more than anything he crafted my sense that I could be a writer. That I was a writer.
That, dear reader, is the reason we teach. We take the wobbly, the unsure, the just beginning and help set them on their paths. We help them see what they can’t yet imagine. In my case, Mike changed how I understood myself and my abilities. Both impacted my career trajectory and how I proceeded as a professor.
So, in the most remarkable of ways, educators help people to be.
Colleagues, as you begin your school year or semester in what is arguably the most chaotic stretch of my professional life, ground yourself in this: you are in the people building business. You are literally changing paths and mindsets. Provide all the test drives to all the young folks you can. You never know where they will land.
Perhaps in their office, cleaning, while they get ready to write book #2.
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* note to readers. This move is genius. I use it with my own students. The “I hear what you are saying but let’s not omit yourself proactively” technique conveys “I get you” and “I got you, take the risk” simultaneously. Thanks, Mike, for this strategy.