When I was student, I never thought about work my teachers did, not even of the work my really good teachers did, like Jan Sawls Mims or Margaret Gage or Lloyd Stow or Milly S. Barranger or Ljubica Popovich or Gerald Chapman. I guess I just thought they taught on the basis of divine inspiration.
Hah!
It's hard to teach well. I should know. I've been doing it for more than 25 years, and while the classroom part has become easier, the preparation hasn't.
The keys to good teaching are two: planning and writing down the planning. That's what I'm doing now before school starts Monday. I've been here at my desk since 9 this morning. And I'll be here tomorrow afternoon and Sunday as well. I thought quietly all summer, and now I have finally started spitting it all out -- bit by carefully considered bit.
It's exciting and exhausting both.
I love books. I love everything about them -- the smell of the paper, the way they feel in my hand, the different typefaces and methods of pagination and decoration, their covers and cover art, dedications and epigraphs, blurbs, ideas and words and typos and . . . well you get the idea.
I used to have one book wall, with enough shelves to leave quite a lot of room for more books. That was six years ago. Now I have a book corner too. And I've eaten up almost all of that space. I have a perfectly good library here at the college, but leave it to me to want to read things I can't find there.
Like this little book I bought through Alibris. What makes it so special, you wonder? My friend Jill wrote it. I read about it on her blog and decided I wanted to read it and own it. I don't personally know many actual published writers. Yes, there are my sometime neighbor and Naomi Shihab Nye and my own brother Billy. And there are Milly Barranger and Andrew Hudgins and now John Jeremiah Sullivan. But in the grand universe of things, they number few. Some of them are really just acquaintances anyway, but Jill is a real friend with a great eye for detail, an incisive wit, and keen intelligence.
Oh. Did I mention she has a beautiful garden and a yen for cats and dogs? And now I have one of her books. It's next on my Shelfari list of things to read.
The keys to good teaching are two: planning and writing down the planning. That's what I'm doing now before school starts Monday. I've been here at my desk since 9 this morning. And I'll be here tomorrow afternoon and Sunday as well. I thought quietly all summer, and now I have finally started spitting it all out -- bit by carefully considered bit.
