HOW MY STUDENTS KEPT ME FROM TEACHING

HOW MY STUDENTS KEPT ME FROM TEACHING

            The semester started off bad and never got any better. 

Each evening as they piled into class, one student, then another, dropped a ten-page manuscript on my desk and turned to write his name and submission title on the board. In dismay, I’d see the names and manuscripts pile up.  Two or three at first, but by the time we were underway, there’d be eight to ten. And one day—eleven! I kept stealing looks at the board, knowing I’d been committed to tons of work at home.  More than a hundred pages of line-by-line editing.   

I pretended to like it, but I didn’t. Eleven manuscripts to read on my stationary bike. But worse, another class session coming up with no time to teach. 

In prior years I’d known our absolute limit was five or six manuscripts—leaving most of an hour for concentrated, hard-core lecturing. Hey, I’d be thinking, I’ve been at this for years, and there’s so much I need to tell them.  When my sessions threatened to spill over with too many manuscripts, I limited the number they could bring to class. I imagined I was doing a terrific job.

But this year I got careless, let the students write all they wanted. And now I was paying the price. 

Funny thing, though—I began noticing a few students were writing better. And soon, without letting the thought filter through and become  “Geronimo!” I began seeing they were ALL writing better. Every darn one of them. In class each week, we discussed what they’d created, and I had the fun of pointing out some unique, amazing, or even great lines. And then great scenes. Or I found mistakes, and instead of offering all the corrections myself, I made them suggest changes.    

We discussed what they’d once done wrong . . . and how the “wrongs” were now going away.      

I never felt I was “teaching.”  I was always just “going over manuscripts.”  And while in prior years, the manuscripts diminished in number as the semester progressed, this year there was no letup. My students, darn their eyes, simply wouldn’t stop writing!  

On the last day I mentioned my regrets to a favorite student. “You know,” I said, “this semester I never found time to teach.” 

She looked at me in surprise.  “Well, you didn’t lecture much.  But those were just words—and I’m not sure they all sank in.”  She paused. “We learned more by studying other manuscripts and figuring out what was wrong. And then hearing your comments and the changes you offered—or let us offer.”  She paused again. “Haven’t you noticed we all got better?”

“Well, actually, I did. But . . . there weren’t any lessons.  No real lessons at all.”

“What do you think ‘getting better’ means?”  She looked at me, letting it percolate. “This was one of the best semesters we’ve ever had.” 

“Really?” 

“Oh, yes,” she said.

I walked away with one of those cartoon light bulbs floating over my head. Before I got to the car I was thinking, Well, hot damn, how did this happen without my noticing?  All these students improving and me fussing about no time to teach.

My husband had come this last night, and now the car was moving, but I was hardly aware of it.  While he drove, I began smiling to myself.

I must have been teaching after all. 


"DAMN THE REJECTIONS, FULL SPEED AHEAD: THE BUMPY ROAD TO GETTING PUBLISHED."    Available on Amazon--or Maralys.com