Teacher Teacher, Can You Teach Me?

When I was in 4th year at York University, I took a course on Hemingway and Faulkner. It was an exciting course, the best I had ever taken. I learned a lot that year, from an incredibly talented English Professor named Don Sumemrhayes. His insight was incredible, and the discussions he encouraged pretty much ALWAYS left the group of 20 or so of us groaning each week when we realized the class was at an end.

At the end of that year we had a final essay worth 50% of our grade. We were to take one of the dozen books we had read and write about it in that traditional sense, calling to mind the various literary tools the book used to engage its reader. It was to have been a traditional essay format, at least as far as we understood.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. In no way could I explain how I felt about To Have and Have Not in a way that would be as intelligible as all the in-class conversations had been with all those big-brains in the class. But I DID feel strongly. So I re-wrote the entire ending of the book. No explanation. Just prose. My entire essay spoke for itself.

I was illustrating what Prof. Summerhayes said when we argued about whether or not a writer’s meaning could be interpreted using our own set of assumptions and life experiences; about whether or not the Deconstruction Theory could be applied to someone else’s work. I had always argued that if they put it out there, one could not help but attach their own meaning to the work. I felt I must therefore be a deconstructionist. And as such, I decided to do something bold and risky. And it was an intense exercise – it was both invigorating and intrusive, taking a writer such as Papa, and reworking him, forsaking his work as his own private canvass.

I really worked at it to get the feel for the writing style; I wanted it to look RIGHT, as though the pages could have been found amongst his things – the alternate ending he had debated for himself. I was scared the day I handed that 20 pages in. I really worried and lost sleep while it was out being graded. And on the day they were handed back I had a pit in my stomach the size of a grapefruit.

He didn’t hand mine back and he asked me to stay.

Uh-oh. What had I done? I about died.

The other students got theirs and all left the room with a backward glance to me. Was I about to fail? Convocation was mere weeks away. I was about to become the first University Degree Holder in my family since my Grandfather. Or was I? Had I risked it all to do some 4th year cocky English major boneheaded move?

He looked at me, that wonderful old hippie with long white hair in a ponytail and a beard, Our own Modern Hemingway. He slid it upside down across the table to me.

Tapping with his left fingers as he eyed me carefully, he sat back and told me to turn it over. I almost couldn't do it. I was so afraid.

A+

His written comment beside that glorious grade:
“A Most Brave and Wonderful Essay, and a joy to read.”

Here I had desecrated the sacred Hemingway, in a really big way, and I got my first EVER A+, weeks away from graduation. (I mean ever here. I'd scored a couple of A's in high school. But I was never considered an A student. And had NEVER received an A+).

I was on cloud 9 for weeks, and still am whenever I think about that class, that teacher, the one who had made all the difference to me. He asked me for a copy of the essay for his own, that it was so good he wanted to put it amongst the highlights of that course. I kept the marked up one and gave him a new one. And as my reward he gave me his own book of poetry, with a gorgeous inscription about a “kindred spirit” and wishing me the best in life.

We have ALL had a teacher, at some point, who has made THAT MUCH of a difference to us. Sarah’s too young yet to have had hers, but it will come, and when it happens, we’ll be able to tell from the gleam in her eye that she’s arrived at that pinnacle of her education career where someone has touched her mind in a way that she never thought possible.

For some people, our teachers, those who make us reach incredible heights, might be a parent or friend or someone else we admire beyond words. But either way, it happens. If it hasn’t happened for you yet, regardless of your age, it will!

Teachers have a wonderful place in our lives, as one of the few people who will share some responsibility for molding our minds and opening our hearts and eyes to wonder.

(I encourage you, if you're interested, to click on the links I've provided to Hemingway and Faulkner and Deconstruction Theory - all good fun!)