I have chosen a life that embraces and encourages classroom learning - but I've chosen to leave the world where classroom instruction is the shibboleth. In secondary education the teacher is responsible (and lauded) for formulating (and often clarifying) a set of anticipatory objectives within the cognitive objective practical and who knows how many other domains. Students expect to be encouraged and guided to a set of skills and values beyond anything they could find on their own. And so a teacher is expected to reach out – facilitate – make easy. Curricula stress the importance of connections and applicability. Every skill is taught with a goal of enabling and empowering. Knowledge is a means and information is sold as a bartering tool.

Once education extends to the university level the chips take on a much more proprietary value. No longer is everyone expected to rely on mathematical ability, poetic prowess or woodworking skills to get by. By the time they reach their junior year most students are able to take only those classes that are directly relevant to their major concentration. They are dealt (and often are interested in) only those chips that are redeemable within their preferred trade.

I've chosen to pursue a life teaching within such a system. The farther along one goes in an educational program the more one separates oneself from the transmission of practically vital instruction and knowledge. It is little argued that learning to read and write frees a young student from a marginal and esoteric connection with society. Simple arithmetic is a part of everybody's daily tasks. Elementary schools spend time imparting on students a flexibility of reason that will allow them to choose and mold their own intellectual development once they have the capacity for forethought and reflection that choosing a career demands.

I will teach linguistics. Not everyone needs to study linguistics. I daresay no-one needs to study linguistics. It serves a curiosity. We formulate our theories and analyze our data only to speak with those who have agreed to show interest. There are pockets of application – and those noble, beneficial and even vital to quality of life – but my interest in dialect phonology and language history is not likely to find place as a service career. Whom will I teach? Mostly those who simply want to know more - and they will most likely be interested in knowledge for knowledge's sake.

And so I have chosen to teach not because I'm interested in strengthening my society or shaping its citizenry or improving the morality of my cohort or fostering world peace with the same stone that gives me a paycheck. I have chosen to teach because I see beauty within an area of knowledge in which I have learned I have a gift. And I am allowed to throw many stones.

I've been through all the usual training programs and scenarios - both formal and informal. I earned my recommendation for teacher certification from the University of Michigan and have been on file in two states as a secondary teacher certified in both English and psychology. I have completed four semesters of practicum work for teaching composition at the college level. I have five years experience as the sole English instructor at a private school. I have four years experience teaching college composition - and I have spent the last 27 years thinking about school evaluating teachers comparing myself to other students and noticing the patterns that contribute to a classroom environment.

And I have yet to reach the point where I feel comfortable saying "as long as I'm left alone to have fun today I'll be happy with the way things go." I still get nervous before every class period and I still have yet to figure out how to create and run a guaranteed lesson plan. The bottom line - teaching is not to be mastered. The perfect classroom is not under my thumb and it will never heel at the snap of my finger. The class is to be wooed and seduced. It will be coaxed and occasionally prodded. But it will never submit.

 

“. . . all good things . . . come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”

– Norman Maclean

Contact Information

Department of English
Purdue University
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038

mcovarru@purdue.edu