Category Archives: Teaching

Stephen King, Story-telling, Teaching, Writing

Thinking About Writing

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Last week, I received the following email from a former student:

Hey Professor Darden:

I wanted to know what books I should read to become a better fiction-writer? I want to try and write fiction books.

A.T.

This was my response:

Dear A.T.:

Glad to hear you’re writing! I always recommend the same two books for people who are serious about writing:

Anne LaMott, Bird by Bird

Stephen King, On Writing

But since I’m a professor and what I do best is professing, here’s some general advice as well:

Continually read the best writers in the genre you want to write in.

Don’t write what you know. Write what you WANT to know. Writing will help you figure stuff out.

Think BIG.

Tell a story, first and foremost. Everything: dialogue, description, action should be designed to help tell the story. Exclusively. Avoid unnecessary dialogue, description, and action that are designed to show off your writing skills.

Write stories that YOU want to read.

Work from an outline.

One of your main characters must CHANGE by the end of the story.

Write for the sheer joy of it, not for getting published (that will happen if you do). Write every day. Write when you don’t feel like it. Just write. Get something on paper/get some pixels on a screen.

Use strong noun/verb sentences.

Do your homework when it comes to finding a published home for your writing.

Know that you’ll get lots of rejection letters/emails. It’s OK. It’s what we do.

Finally, Bird by Bird is so beautifully written, it is hard to extract quotes from it. On Writing, on the other hand, like most of Stephen King’s work, lends itself to anecdotes. Here are some of my favorite excerpts, some of which I Xeroxed when the book first came out. I can’t find my copy of the book (probably loaned it to someone), but I still have the Xeroxes:

Get the first draft done quickly…

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot activity.

On rewriting…

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

Second drafts can only help so much…

“A movie should be there in rough cut,” the film editor Paul Hirsch once told me. The same is true of books. I think it’s rare that incoherence or dull storytelling can be solved by something so minor as a second draft.

Formula for success: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%…

Mostly when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts. This suggest cutting to speed the pace, and that’s what most of us end up having to do (kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings)…

I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: “Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.”

Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.

Some meaty detective-fiction similes…

My all-time favorite similes, by the way, come from the hardboiled-detective fiction of the forties and fifties, and the literary descendants of the dime-dreadful writers. These favorites include “It was darker than a carload of assholes” (George V. Higgins) and “I lit a cigarette that tasted like a plumber’s handkerchief” (Raymond Chandler).

On writing seminars and the desire for “the right writing environment”…

In truth, I’ve found that any day’s routine interruptions and distractions don’t much hurt a work in progress and may actually help it in some ways. It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.

What scares the so-called master of fear?

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

I’ll end with a truism. In my classes, I have good writers and I have young people who want to be good writers. Invariably, when I talk about books, the good writers have generally read those books. Good writers read. Lots. Always have.

One last quote from King’s On Writing:

It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.

Amen and amen.

 

 

 

Bob Reid, Teaching

On Being Bob Reid …

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The recent passing of legendary professor Bob Reid sent a chill through those of us who love Baylor. It was a reminder, once again, of a day when great teachers ruled. Not researchers or writers or administrators. Teachers. Inspiring men and women who knew how to move mountains with their words and — what is much more difficult — knew how to move the hearts and minds of hormone-ridden 18-year-old boys.

I wrote a feature on Bob Reid for The Baylor Line a few years ago. Perhaps it will be of interest to you. It was a bittersweet journey for me to read it again when The Line posted it on their website this week: http://www.bayloralumniassociation.com/content/baylor_line__online_publications/prof_robert_rei.asp

Re-reading it, I wondered if we’d ever see his like again.

Bob Reid did not have a Ph.D. He didn’t write scholarly, academic tomes. He loved teaching. He loved his students. And they loved — and still love — him.

He made Greek and Roman history come alive. He was passionate about it. He was a story-teller. Yes, there were dates and facts and figures mixed in from time to time, but you wanted to learn them because they were markers along the way that helped you remember the stories. He was a magician with words. The old Roman emperors and Greek philosophers lived in his classrooms as surely as they once lived in the ancient Mediterranean. He often spoke of past events in the present tense. Sometimes he spoke of them in the first person — then he would catch himself and laugh.

Oh, how we loved to hear him laugh!

Bob Reid believed that Baylor could best be served by inspiring young people, by filling them with a passion for learning and life. We talked about this a few times. The idea that a professor could be so caught up in his research that a student could be just an annoyance baffled him. The idea that research was its own reward and that teaching was something you did as little as possible of as you worked for your own greater academic glory through publishing frankly appalled him.

Bob Reid was a teacher.

Got a problem with that?

And, oh! How I’d love to hear him laugh again …

Blogging, Teaching, William Safire

Like Leading a Horse to Water …

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OK, I admit it. I was skeptical. I was nervous. I was, in fact, the typical Baylor University faculty member facing something new. And I was one of the four original members of Baylor’s first Academy of Teaching and Learning.

Oh, our captain — Dr. Gardner Campbell — assured us that by the end of the semester that we would be blogging and Twittering and whatevering as well as our students. And, more importantly, that we’d find it helpful both as a teaching tool and as a researching aid. But I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t so much skeptical as over-whelmed. I learn by narrative. I have trouble with a list. And, in the beginning, blogging was just that — a list. Do that. Do this. Do it twice.

I blogged. Tentatively at first. I messed up. It got fixed. I messed up again. I fixed it. Big step.

In time, Gardner was right. Blogging can be a valuable tool. No, really! I like it. I get it. And this is what I get:

1. Blogging connects you to a world of scholars (or just plain fans). Magazines are nice. But you’ll never make community with the readers of a monthly or quarterly magazine. Now I talk to other true believers. We share stuff. I learn about things in my field that I otherwise would have taken months to find. And blogging connections begat more blogging connections. You’re not alone. There are a world of black gospel enthusiasts out there. It becomes a community of like-minded scholars in ways that an annual conference or a quarterly journal can’t be.

2. It helps me keep important stuff that I don’t know is important at the time. I find a snippet of information. I blog about it and it’s saved forever. Maybe I never use it in my research. But maybe it is just the thing the blogger in Carjackistan is looking for. I helped.

3. It helps me try out new approaches. I think better when I write.  I’ve tried out some intros and some connections and some thoughts in my blog about both writing and teaching.  Once something is expressed and organized like this, I can learn from it.

4. Here is a quote from William Safire. Substitute “blogs” for “diaries:”  “Diaries remind us of details that would otherwise fade from memory and make less vivid our recollection. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, whose private journal is an invaluable source for Civil War historians, watched Abraham Lincoln die in a room across the street from Ford’s Theater and later jotted down a detail that puts the reader in the room: ‘The giant sufferer lay extended diagonally across the bed, which was not long enough for him…’ ”

5. It makes me closer to the students I teach. They think in blogs and FaceBook and Twitter and texting and other forms of communication now, like it or not. Blogging is my first foray in this Brave New Language.

6. It makes me a step closer to effectively working with my colleagues who still fear these new technologies. I’m able now to say, “No, this is not a waste of time. I know we write all of the time. But this is … different. And here is how it can help…”

Six things I’ve learned this semester. Six new things. That’s a good semester’s work. Thank you, Gardner and Heidi and Debra and Mona and the ATL.

In return, here are three things that I have figured out (with the help, again of William Safire) that I’d like to share back:

A. You own the blog. The blog doesn’t own you.

B. Write for yourself.

C. Put down what cannot be reconstructed.

Acting, Teaching, Traffic

Til We Have Faces

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I’m looking for a girl who has no face
She has no name, or number
And so I search within his lonely place
Knowing that I won’t find her

— Traffic, “No Face, No Name, No Number” (Winwood/Capaldi)

Patricia Wilson in the Baylor Law School asked me to be the client for the finals of the ABA’s National Client Counseling Competition last week. And since I have trouble telling someone as giving and generous as Pat “no,” I agreed.

I was given a couple of pages of description, both about me and my problem, which I was to more-or-less memorize. And then, over 40-minute intervals, I would be interviewed by three teams of two young lawyers, while a number of Waco lawyers watched and listened and eventually judged. I had to stay in character, so if one team asked something not on my sheet — I had to improvise. But I then had to remember what I’d said so in case the next team asked something similar, I’d give the same answer. Consistency is important.

It was nerve-wracking, but fun. The three collegiate teams were all excellent. All three put me through the wringer. My “role” was to be a basically nice guy who had done something really, really stupid. And, because of it, I was being blackmailed by a former employee.

I wasn’t to volunteer anything that wasn’t asked … and their job was to ferret out the real story from all of my rationalizations, dissemblings, evasions, and self-serving proclamations. It gave me the chance to be an actor, without having to memorize hundreds of lines.

The winning team, by the way, went on to the International Client Counseling Competition in Hong Kong.

I’ve been told that all lawyers (out of a sense of self-preservation) have to assume that virtually all of their potential clients are lying to them. You need to discover as much as you can as soon as you can about your client. It’s not a good thing when a client suddenly “remembers” something damaging while on the witness stand under intense questioning by the opposing attorney.

But what I realized on the way home was that even when we’re not in court, we wear a variety of faces. We’re all actors, in a way. We want the world to think well of us. That’s why we smile in photos. We have all faces or masks. Very, very rarely do we ever allow someone to see the “real” us behind that cheery mask. It’s a scary prospect to let someone see us as we really are (or believe we really are).

I present a certain persona to my classes. I think I need to project an air of confidence. In the class with 280 students in particular, I think need to project a presence of being in control. (Meanwhile while it is about 35 years too late for them to think I’m cool, I don’t want to be seen as a someone who is desperately “uncool,” either!)

We do it in our jobs, within our churches, even to those who love us.

My question is this: Is that what other people, other students, other Christians REALLY want? Do they really want this fake, smiley, confident face? Or are they searching, waiting, hoping for the REAL me?

Would I be a more effective teacher if I were more honest, more open, more vulnerable, more transparent?

Or would it be a feeding frenzy — with the sharks smelling the blood (and weakness) in the water?

Teaching is such an odd thing anyhow. Standing before dozens (sometimes hundreds) of young faces, most of whom whose names I don’t know, nonchalantly sharing my wisdom. Some are eager, some are indifferent, and some are absorbed in text-messaging friends and never once look up.

Would I reach those text-messagers better if I were more real?

Pete Hamill, Teaching, Technology, Willie Mays

Say Hey!

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The secret of life can be found in baseball.

Oh, not today’s steroid-driven, television revenue-addicted, brazillion-dollar bonus baby baseball, but the “real” baseball of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants, and the St. Louis Browns. Virtually every novelist I’ve ever interviewed has been a baseball fan (Cub and Red Sox fanatics predominate). I can still name the line up and batting averages of the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals (who beat, of course, the Great Satan — the New York Yankees).

And it is with that background that I re-read Seymour Papert’s thoughtful (if turgid) “Why School Reform is Impossible”. It’s a slow but worthwhile slog for those of us wanting to know if this patient (education) can be saved.

Frankly, Papert isn’t convinced it can — or should be — resuscitated. Certainly there is much to be discouraged about right now. Public school teachers and university lecturers and adjuncts teaching four sections of freshman English are on the front lines of a cultural and technological war, even while Higher Education retreats further and further into the distant past, cutting off supply lines, and shooting its wounded warriors.

Hell, I’d be depressed … except … except … it’s Spring Training. It’s baseball. It’s a well-reviewed new book about Willie Mays, Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend by James S. Hirsch. I’ll probably read it someday.

In the meantime, I loved Peter Hamill’s review in the February 28, 2010 New York Times Book Review section. Hamill (a recovering Brooklyn Dodger fan) is one of our great writers, a brilliant newspaperman and stylist, and currently a distinguished writer in residence at N.Y.U.

As is their custom, The Editors of the Book Review section include a short bio/appreciation of Hamill at the beginning of the magazine. In it, they cite Pete saying that he’s actually optimistic about the future of journalism:

“The delivery system is changing , but the kids I meet at N.Y.U. have the passion and desire. They deserve to work with great editors, full of exactitude, including grouchy copy editors who insist that ‘reference’ is a noun, not a verb. In a place where they will learn something new every day. I hope also that their future work is in the company of others, where stories are bounced around in city rooms and saloons. If not, they will miss a lot, including the sardonic laughter.”

This is profound stuff. As profound, in its own way, as Papert’s essay. “The delivery system is changing.” When it comes to technology, the future is now.It’s not in the batter’s box, it’s at the plate, with a belt-high curve ball that’s not breaking coming right down the pipe. Those of us who refuse to see it/believe it will end up with the “Golden Sombrero” (four strikeouts in a game) and the game, the sport, the future will pass us by.

Get over it. Deal with it. Learn to use technology.

Second, “In a place where they will learn something new every day.” This isn’t about the students, this is about their professors. WE ought to be the ones learning something new every day. About the BEST means to BEST reach those students who are full of, as Hamill writes, “passion and desire.”

And third, “I hope also that their future work is in the company of others …”. Hamill may be talking about his journalism students, but this applies directly to professors. I hear too many of my colleagues bad-mouthing the students — and each other. I see too many of my colleagues across the academy hide behind closed doors, avoiding students, dissing their counterparts down the hall. They claim Research is their god and that students are at best an annoyance and secretly (and not so secretly) despise them.

Guess what? I hear students talk. They know who you are. They despise you. You’re just another hurdle to overcome on the way to the future. Their future.

Baseball. Journalism. The academy. We’ve got a lot in common. Hirsch reports that Willie Mays approached every game (and he played a LOT of them) with a genuine enthusiasm and joy. In our worst days, we’re still touching lives, changing lives. It’s a privilege, not a burden.

We operate in a deeply, deeply flawed system. I’m not sure if Papert thinks it is salvageable. Maybe not …

But it’s Spring Training … every team has a chance … and Willie Mays is in centerfield….

David Bowie, Teaching, Technology

Ch-ch-changes …

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Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
— David Bowie

Most things change, by entrophy if nothing else. Governments evolve and change. Even the military, that bastion of conservatism changes. The generals in World War I who watched the flower of the youth of several nations die senselessly before the machine gun were operating under principles set in place before Napoleon. But even they were forced to change with the onset of World War II.

Education, however, does not change. Yes, there are differences between modern education and the original Socratic method, but Socrates never had an Introduction to Mass Communications class of 300. And my smallest classes do, indeed, revert back to the Socratic question/answer method.

In fact, education fights change. Professors fight fierce rear-guard scorched earth actions against change. (And the higher the ranking of the professor, the greater the resistance to change.) Alumni withhold donations over perceived changes. Administrations move at a glacial speed, even when a change is clearly in everybody’s best interests.

Seymour Papert’s thoughtful paper “Why School Reform is Impossible” is a reasoned response to the this age-old question. His observation that even modern technology, which has changed all other facets of modern life, has failed to impact education (secondary and college), save for tiny pockets of enlightenment here and there is perhaps the most chilling section of the essay.

Sure, professors and students now communicate by e-mail, professors use Blackboard for grades and attendance, some even link edited film clips to Power Point presentations. But those are superficial changes at best.

The basic methods of teaching (lecturing and testing) are virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, our students drop out, tune out, and grow more cynical, even as our old school methods of conveying information grow more irrelevant. David Bowie again:

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through

When we allow them to bring their laptops to class, students check their e-mail and Facebook pages, surf the Internet, or play games. I can see the glow of their cellphones as they text each other, pretending that they’re listening. Although lately, some have quit pretending…

Still, Why Education Reform is Impossible implies that the revolution will occur. In fact, it is occuring now. The difference is that this revolution is occuring — like the very best revolutions always do — from the bottom up.

We’re in a period of transition — the first waves of students who have mastered these new technologies are flooding our educational systems. When they’ve moved on into their careers — and hopefully some of them will choose K-12 and college education — they’ll bring with them the technology skills many of us current lack. Old timers will fight them. School boards won’t support them. Parents will complain about them. But the sheer weight of numbers will overcome all obstacles. Technologically aware and adept teachers will teach technologically aware and adept students … and things will change.

It’s happening now in the Journalism Department. We’re scrambling to keep up with students who already know (or who can quickly master) Dream Weaver, End Design, Adobe, and digital editing. We’re having to learn how to challenge these kids, how to assess them, how to incorporate what they know and want to know into our teaching methods on the fly. And the results, I’m happy to say, aren’t half bad.

I have colleagues in other departments who say that’s all well and good for “the trades” (as some of the derisively call departments like Journalism, FDM, Consumer Science), but that these changes will NEVER infiltrate their “pure” academics, the humanities, philosophy, math, Latin, Great Texts. They tell me that a REAL education is not possible utilizing these tools and advances.

Fine. Or, as my students say, “Whatever.”

The Fourth Wave. The Fifth Wave. The Sixth Wave … but who is counting anymore? The kids are bringing it with them NOW.

And guess what? The kids are alright.

Oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Pretty soon you’re gonna get a little older
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
I said that time may change me
But I can’t trace time

New York Times, Paul Smon, Teaching

Slip-sliding away …

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Slip sliding away, slip sliding away
You know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away — Paul Simon 

Steven Strogatz has a wonderful new series of blogs in The New York Times “Opinionator” section. They’re on why we should love math. Really.

The first two — “From Fish to Infinity” and “Rock Groups” — capture the enthusiasm he has for the subject. He writes well, chooses great illustrations, and clearly loves this stuff. He also cites “Sesame Street,” which is always a good thing.

In the comments section on “Rock Star,” Melissa (from Hawaii) doesn’t get one of the points Strogatz is making. A number of readers volunteer to help her out — all in a genial, gentle way. Gotta love those New York Times readers!

It’s OK, Melissa. I didn’t understand everything Strogatz said, either. Nor did I understand your question. In fact, I didn’t understand most of the explanations for your question, either.

I wanted to, of course. But the more I read, the more I found my mind slip-sliding away. It was as if my brain was Teflon (c). I loved the Strogatz columns, but they washed over me like a gentle rain. None of the material actually sank in. And I really tried. Honest.

And you know what? That’s OK, too. Strogatz has an over-riding main point about these columns, as best as I can tell. He wants to share his love of the elegant perfection that is mathematics. He wants to rescue it from the drugery of rote memorization and endless algebraic and geometry equations. And I get that. I really do.

I’ll read some more of his columns. I probably won’t understand them any better. But I’ll get swept up in his passion and enjoy the ride. I don’t have to master the mathematics. I just have to remember the journey.

Studies show that our students remember very little of the specifics of what we teach, especially in the classes that they believe don’t directly apply to their major (or what they consider their major at that particular point in time) or chosen profession. I can see it in many of their faces. They’re smiling at me and their minds are slip-sliding away.

But, if in the end, they remember that I loved this stuff, that I thought it was important, and I cared enough to share my enthusiasm, then maybe they’ll come back to it later, maybe it’ll matter to them at some point in the future when they’re a little more experienced, when they’ve had some time to reflect.

I’m good with that.

Teaching, Technology, Thunderclap Newman

Call Out the Instigators …

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Call out the instigators
Because there’s something in the air
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
— “Something in the Air”    (Thunderclap Newman)

“Something in the Air” is one of my all-time favorite songs, a one-hit wonder of titanic proportions, right up there with “Scene Beyond Dreams” (The Call) and “In a Big Country” (Big Country). I love the sense of the apocalyptic … it captures a moment in time in the late 1960s when everything seemed to be a spearpoint in history. Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the landing on the moon, the assassinations, the riots, the end of the hippie era and the beginning of something unknowable, but inbued with infinite promise.

My musically VERY aware son Van has many times lamented that he wasn’t born at such an exciting era (the old Irish cautionary phrase, “May you be cursed to be born in interesting times” notwithstanding). I generally nod knowingly, sigh dramatically, and pat him on his young head. (This is where in a perfect world I’d take a long draw on my pipe and say something wise, except I don’t smoke and usually all I can think of during these teaching moments is an old limerick.)

Since I’ve been teaching the Introduction of Mass Communications JOU/FDM 1303, however, I’ve come to a very different understanding. Nearly ever week I have to update nearly every lecture. Stuff is happening at an extraordinary clip right now.

Something is in the air RIGHT NOW. It’s called technology. The digital, dig-able planet. Lots of good stuff. Lots of bad stuff. But mostly lots and lots of NEW stuff.  Like it or loathe it, fight it or ignore it, surrender to it and good gently into that good night or rage, rage against the dying of the light. It don’t matter. We’re on the crest of the wave.

I want to be one of the instigators. I want identify the good stuff, learn the good stuff, and incorporate it not just in my classes and my professional life but in my daily life. For years, I’ve resisted it (I don’t have the time, it costs too much money, I don’t need to know this).

No more.

The Revolution’s HERE.

A Life's Work, David Licata, Documentary, Gussie Oscar, Teaching

Oh, for the gift to see ourselves …

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One of the most helpful (and unnerving) aspects of the Summer Teaching Institute a few years ago was when Bob Baird videotaped each participant delivering a lecture, then played that lecture back for all of the Institute fellows to see.

Oh my …

Do I really leave most of my sentences incomplete? Do I really jump around with my topics like that? Is it the camera or that hideous jacket that makes me look so fat?

The video was a good catalyst for me to examine HOW I present material in the classroom. And I hope I’ve gotten better since then.

Meanwhile, I am one of the four subjects of film-maker David Licata’s latest documentary, “A Life’s Work.” David’s quest is to find out what drives the people who undertake mammoth tasks that they know they’ll never finish. My personal Herculian task is to digitize a copy of every piece of black gospel vinyl released between 1945 and 1970. To that end, I co-founded and help administer The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project here at Baylor University.

David filmed me while I conducting research in Chicago for my book on the influence of black sacred music on the Civil Rights Movement. Amid the interviews with gospel artists, Freedom Riders, activists and pastors, he caught me looking for rare gospel vinyl at a used record store in Hyde Park.

The documentary is probably still a year away from release, but he posted that three-minute clip on YouTube, if you’re interested:

Watching it, I had the same reaction: Oh my … again … when did I get so old (and chunky)? And worse, do I still ramble like that when I lecture?
So much of teaching IS the presentation. I can have great content and if I’m not engaging, compelling, interesting as someone who is conveying that information, then why should the students stay engaged?
The clip has made me aware — once again — that their attention is NOT a given. I have to earn it. I need to continually strive to have my words, demeanor, tone, even posture and body language match the enthusiasm I still feel for conveying what I believe is important, potentially life-changing information.
P.S. To see more of David’s work, check out
The photo above is image grab from an interview I’m doing with the Rev. Reuben Burton in Chicago.
Self-Discovery, Teaching

Releasing the angels …

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“Somewhere I heard a story about Michaelangelo’s pushing of a huge piece of rock down a street. A curious neighbor sitting lazily on the porch of his house called to him and inquired why he labored so over an old piece of stone. Michelangelo is reported to have answered, “Because there is an an angel in that rock that wants to come out.” This story comes to mind when I think about the gifts or talents given to each of us. Every person has the task of releasing angels by shaping and transfiguring the raw materials that lie about him so that they become houses and machinery and pictures and bridges. How we do this — how we ‘build the earth,’ to use Teilhard de Chardin’s phrase — is determined by the discovery and the use of our gifts.” — Elizabeth O’Connor, Eighth Day of Creation: Gifts and Creativity

The Book of Revelation talks about the angels of nations and churches. Walter Wink says that every individual church has an individual angel, one who is robust or frail, according to the faith of that particular congregation.

I don’t know anything about “guardian angels,” but I do know we all have a divine spark of creativity in us, one bestowed on us by the Great Creator. And I am grateful for that.

Teaching, then, is “releasing the angel” in each student … finding just the right combination of outside reading/experience, interaction, praise, guidance, encouragement, and — occasionally — correction for each student.

I am becoming increasingly convinced the “old” model of standing in front of the class and lecturing from my (relatively) vast storehouse (or outhouse) of knowledge may not be the best way to release their angels.

Studies have long shown that what students figure out for themselves they retain long after a standard lecture. I believe that.

Finding a better way to involve classes of 15 or more in that process of self-discovery — of self-teaching — is my dilemma.