CREATE

The teacher stood at the front of the classroom, presumably because she planned on imparting nuggets of wisdom to the impressionable youth before her. She turned to the white board behind her and slowly, almost languidly, she wrote 6 letters.
C-R-E-A-T-E.

The students glanced up from cell phone texting and writing notes at the bored. With a smirk one front-row student muttered “so we’re back in kindergarten craft time”

The teacher smiled, confident and content with her work. She reached for the meter stick. The student shuddered, expecting a blow. Instead, the teacher underlined the word, and opened her mouth to speak for the first time that semester.

“This is your syllabus. This word defines this course. If you learn this one thing, I will consider it to be a worthwhile semester.”

Nervous titters echoed throughout the classroom.

“Um…this is World History, right?” the smart-aleck in the first row asked, raising his hand as he grinned at his friends.

“Precisely. The study of History is an act of creation. Understanding is more than simple rote memorization, more than the ability to write a passable essay on past events. It is, and will forever be, an act of creation.”

The students began to pay attention. Several in the back row, consigned to the typical syllabus lecture, sat up and looked interested. A student from the middle of the classroom timidly raised her hand.

“So does this mean we don’t have any homework? Or that we’ll be doing creative histories? Could we do creative writing?”

Several students groaned when she gave possible homework assignments. The teacher smiled and filed away the girl’s face in order to keep track of which students might be needing an extra challenge. With a dramatic pause, the teacher turned away from the class and asked a string of questions that made the highschooler’s heads spin.

“How is a book made? How does one record, report or review an event that they have seen? How do we synthesize the information we know with the information we’ve been told? What’s the difference between learning something and, just knowing it? What have you seen or done that is worth recording for your kids or grandkids? Does a 15 year old’s opinion matter? Whose opinions matter? Who decides what goes into history books for future generations and what is lost forever? Does something have to be written down to leave an impression or memory? Why have we changed? What has changed? Is history fair to everyone or just the winners? What’s the point of history?”

Most of the class had glazed over at question number three, but a few struggled to comprehend, and a few more timidly raised their hands. With a gesture the teacher motioned their hands down.

“I’m afraid these aren’t the kinds of questions we can answer easily---it’s not like Sunday School—the answer can’t always be ‘Jesus!’ but we will look at them, and attempt to understand them as we go through this class—creating our personal stories as we try to grasp the history of our world and the human race.”

A student from the back of the class raised his hand to ask, “So are we going to have homework or not. I figured you should know that the first day you’re supposed to give us our syllabus with the homework for the semester.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that---we’ll create homework and study as we go along---finding what interests you and focusing on the important bits that will help us answer the questions I just asked. We’ll start today with an art project—mainly because I think it will force you to pay attention and you might learn something.”

She walked behind her desk and began pulling out supplies as she talked, a stack of paper, a book and a bag of chalk came out of the cupboard as she finished her introductory lecture.

“You see,” She said as she passed out the paper. “ art has been a huge part of human life since we first showed up on this planet. If you would please split into groups of three…” Her lecture was interrupted by the clamor of desks moving, students whispering and chairs scraping. “Each group will be assigned a project on a different ancient culture. If you get out your books you’ll be able to find out a bit about your culture, and if you search online you’ll find more. This book has an example of their artwork. At the end of this class I want each group to have a few bits of information on their culture and a sketch of what they plan to draw in chalk outside.




“Love is a flame, and the good teacher raises in students a burning desire for his or her approval and attention, his or her voice and presence, that is erotic in its urgency and intensity...the art of teaching consists not only of arousing desire but of redirecting it toward its proper object, from the teacher to the thing taught. Teaching, Yeats said, is lighting a fire, not filling a bucket, and this is how it gets lit.” (43, Love on Campus, Deresiewicz, William, The American Scholar Summer 2007)
Intellectual crushes, brain sex, eros of souls

“Your parents bring you into nature, but your teacher brings you into culture. Natural transmission is easy; any animal can do it. Cultural transmission is hard; it takes a teacher. (ibid 44)

“ what attracts professors to students then, is not their bodies but their souls. Young people are still curious about ideas, still believe in them—in their importance, their redemptive power. Socrates says in the Symposium that the hardest thing about being ignorant is that you’re content with yourself, but for many kids when they get to college, this is not yet true. They recognize themselves as incomplete, and they recognize, if only intuitively, that completion comes through eros. So they seek out professors with whom to have relationships and we seek them out in turn. Teaching, finally is about relationships. It is mentorship, not instruction. Socrates also says that the bond between teacher and student lasts a lifetime, even when the two are no longer together….. The Socratic relationship is so profoundly disturbing to our culture that it must be defused before it can be approached. Yet many thousands of kids go off to college every year hoping, at least timly, to experience it. It has become a kind of suppressed cultural memory, a haunting imaginative possibility. In our sex-stupified, anti-intellectual culture, the eros of souls has become the love that dares not speak its name.”

Why do I want to teach? Because I want to light a flame in my students, whether 5 or 25 that turns them toward the truth.