creative writing students

Guidelines For a Last-Minute Faculty Hire

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Stop sign 01

 

Greetings!

We’re thrilled that you can be teaching for us on such short notice. Speaking as chair of the creative writing program, we’re all so very proud to have you, especially since you’re an alumnus and live in-state. Here are some important guidelines we didn’t discuss in our texts and emails:

Please do not mention in class the tenured professor who you’re replacing and his unfortunate tirade about what he wrongly called “cancel culture” and “the Twitter mob” after he quoted James Baldwin and was justly excoriated. We all wish him a speedy recovery. He’ll be back next semester after his guided retreat of struggle and self-interrogation.

You have absolute and total freedom to assign any writing exercises and readings you choose in your introductory and advanced fiction courses, but they cannot include trigger or pre-trigger words of any kind whatsoever, and so I urge you to contact the Vetting Committee ASAP. You’ll find them very thorough.

We also expect you to submit your course materials and each syllabus to the Committee on Cultural Appropriation and Misappropriation and abide by their decisions as well as those of the Vetting Committee. Both committees work with dispatch and I must say a keen sense of honor and duty. You’ll feel inspired.

We picked you for your distinguished publishing record, but we urge you not to refer to yourself as a “working writer”–which you did more than once in our communications. This label could be seen as offensive, derogatory, and demeaning by other faculty who are proud that they’ve made their homes in academe. Mentioning your Pulitzer also validates hetero-normative and hierarchical notions of value.

In our discussions, you presented yourself as knowing “the publishing world inside and out” and said this was something special that you could offer students. I surely don’t need to point out that all of our creative writing faculty offer students something special. Your statement could be seen as arrogance, puffery, and blatant self-promotion.

You were an obvious and natural choice, having published more books in more genres than the entire creative writing faculty combined (please keep that to yourself). Making too much of these accomplishments might overwhelm your students and be interpreted as bullying or intimidation, while also disrespecting your colleagues (see above).

When students speak their truth, it is incumbent on you to not ask for explanations, clarifications, or in any way seem to challenge what they say. Your part is silent. Do not display any change of expression and definitely do not ask other students to comment. These actions will be reported and you could face dismissal.

Lastly, as a temporary professor, you will not be sitting in on any faculty meetings as your presence would most likely be anomalous and disruptive. We also won’t be giving you a plastic name sign for your office door since you’ll be here for just the one semester, but feel free to mention us in any interviews you do. We would appreciate the publicity.

Have fun!

Lev Raphael is the author of Department of Death and nine other mysteries set at the fictional State University of Michigan.

“Stop sign 01” by kirstyhall is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Teaching Creative Writing Should Be Creative, Not Destructive

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I’ve done a lot of speaking at colleges and universities around the country and faculty tell me many behind-the-scenes stories. Properly disguised, they make great material for my Nick Hoffman academic mystery series: tales of petty infighting, squabbling committees, ridiculous vendettas–all the simmering snarkiness that Borges called “bald men arguing over a comb.”

But I also hear stories from students that aren’t remotely amusing, stories about what it’s like for them to be in a classroom with a professor who sees teaching very differently than I do. Teachers who seem to enjoy shaming students in front of the rest of the class, as if they’re coaches whipping an under-performing player into shape.

Creative writing is one of my passions and I’ve heard of professors in these classes who stop students while they’re reading aloud and say, “That stinks!” or worse. I’ve never done that. I have stopped stopped students to ask them to slow down or read more distinctly, or to say something positive if I was blown away and couldn’t wait till they’re finished. And sometimes I just start laughing if the work is really funny. As for dissing a student’s work, seriously, who does that help?

I’ve heard of some professors who can be so intimidating that they make students shake with fear when they challenge what the students have to say. I’ve also heard of professors in creative writing classes who don’t let everyone read their work aloud, but keep picking their favorites, creating resentment and embarrassment. In my creative writing classes, everyone has read aloud because the class should be a creative community, not a jungle.

I see it that way because I had an amazing creative writing teacher freshman year at Fordham University; she became my mentor and model. She ran her workshops with good humor and warmth. She spurred us all to write better by pinpointing what we did best and helping us improve whatever that was. She never insulted us, humiliated us, made fun of us, or played favorites. She encouraged us all with grace and good humor. I’d even say she enjoyed us; she definitely enjoyed being in the classroom and made us feel that way, too. Nobody ever dreaded being there.

Teaching isn’t combat or coaching, especially teaching creative writing. We’re not in the classroom to humiliate and harden our students as if they’re going into the cutthroat world of business or getting ready for the next football game against a team with no losses. Our role should be to help them grow as writers, identify what they do best and where they need to do more work.

That’s what I do with my online creative writing workshops, too. As reporter Charles Kuralt put it simply: “Good teachers know how to bring out the best in their students.” Who needs shame to do that?

Lev Raphael is the author of Writer’s Block is Bunk and 24 other books which you can find on Amazon. His creative writing workshop site is writewithoutborders.com.