I come from a family of teachers. My mother\u2019s father taught economics in Poland. My mother taught language and literature in Belgium. And in New York, my brother taught special education.<\/p>\n
I picked my undergraduate college, the Lincoln Center branch of Fordham University, specifically because of one creative writing teacher I\u2019d heard about as inspirational. It was a great choice. I ended up taking all her classes and didn\u2019t just learn the subject matter, but also how to teach, how to orchestrate a class, and how to have fun doing it.<\/p>\n
In senior year, she took me on as an unofficial apprentice because I told her my twin goals in life were to write and to teach. I watched what she did in classrooms as an observer, and she even showed me how she graded papers. When I started teaching, her model was always in my head. She was in my head.<\/p>\n
Recently I\u2019ve been teaching at Michigan State University. Like many colleges and universities, the powers-that-be have no idea what a good learning environment is for teaching literature or creative writing. They especially overcrowd the creative writing workshops, which means students can\u2019t get the attention they need in class or out of it. That\u2019s grossly unfair to the students, many of whom work more than one job to help pay their tuition.<\/p>\n
Typically I\u2019ve had twenty-five students in writing workshops, though once it was thirty. Yes, thirty. These class sizes not only made it harder for me to give students all the attention and feedback they need, the overcrowding made it harder for students to get to know each other and feel comfortable sharing their work. But administrators don\u2019t seem to care.<\/p>\n
Luckily I\u2019ve also been able to teach independent study students and supervise their senior theses, where individual attention is the critical foundation.\u00a0 When you sign up for one of my workshops, you’re really doing an independent study.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m applying what I\u2019ve learned in many years of classroom teaching in a very focused way. I get to coach and mentor writers at all stages and offer the kind of individualized attention that learning to write requires. No matter where you are in your development as a writer, sharing your work with someone requires trust and an atmosphere of safety. That\u2019s what I saw my college mentor create over and over. Teaching online, I can truly share what I learned from her, and carry on a family tradition in an exciting new way.<\/p>\n
Lev Raphael is the prize-winning author of twenty-five books in a dozen different genres, including a guide to the Writing life, Writer’s Block is Bunk<\/a>.<\/em> You can find his creative writing workshops at writewithoutborders.com.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I come from a family of teachers. My mother\u2019s father taught economics in Poland. My mother taught language and literature in Belgium. And in New York, my brother taught special education. I picked my undergraduate college, the Lincoln Center branch of Fordham University, specifically because of one creative writing teacher I\u2019d heard about as inspirational. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[298,497,95,1247,165,166,241,242,290,214,787,380,495,206],"class_list":["post-5091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advice-for-writers","tag-authors","tag-creative-writing-2","tag-creative-writing-workshops","tag-inspiration","tag-motivation","tag-teaching","tag-teaching-creative-writing","tag-the-writers-life","tag-the-writing-life","tag-writers-block-is-bunk","tag-writers","tag-writing","tag-writing-workshops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5091"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5095,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5091\/revisions\/5095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}