Francisco's Journal an author discusses the art of writing

November 11, 2018

Permission to Teach Freely

Filed under: Literature,Teaching,Teaching Literature — Francisco Stork @ 10:59 am

[Excerpt from keynote address: Utah Council of Teachers of English, November 9, 2018]

It strikes me that the question, why do we need to teach literature goes to the question of what it means to teach freely and the answer to that question is a kind of spiritual answer. For me, the simple answer to the question, why do we need to teach literature goes something like this: Because one does not live by bread alone.

Of course, that answer is not complete, is it? If one does not live by bread alone, then what does one live by? What do you live by? Here it is that you get to freely fill in the blank. I call whatever it is you fill in here something spiritual not because it is necessarily associated with any particular religion, although it can be, but because the response is a reality that lives in us, in our minds, in that complexity of being that is you and me. A spiritual reality, an invisible center, from which words and acts spring forth. To teach freely is to operate out of that invisible reality in the classroom and at the same time to recognize that literature gives young people the opportunity to discover that reality – to answer in their own unique way, what does one live by if not bread alone?

I think that to teach freely you need to accept that in your heart, deep in your heart, you know that there is more to teaching than just teaching a student what he needs in order to get the bread he needs to live. The problem that I see is that you are besieged by external constraints, you are forced to work under restraints imposed upon you by those who see the making of bread as the ultimate and only goal. To teach freely, you must operate under those constraints while those constraints are there, but you need not accept those constraints internally.

But the truth is that when the question: Why do we need to teach literature? was asked a few years ago, I did not speak freely. I was inhibited because in our modern world we are afraid to speak about truths that may be interpreted as religious, or as spiritual. We are more afraid of being cheesy and corny than we are of being vulgar. But what is worse: I did not see the place, the real place where that question was coming from. It wasn’t coming from someone looking for arguments he could use to respond to the job-secured colleague down the hall who was teaching kids how to enter code. I think the person who asked me that question wanted to know if he had chosen the right path. Maybe he was barely making his monthly mortgage payments and maybe he was hoping the old Honda would hold up another year and maybe his class had gotten below par scores as dictated by those who dictate such things, and maybe all he wanted was someone to say “Yes, you are needed,” and to thank him, to thank him, for the path he decided to take.

I think now that what the questioner wanted was permission to teach freely. Not my permission, because it is not mine to give. But I think he was looking for a way to give himself permission to teach freely. So that’s what I want to urge you to do today. Give yourself permission to teach freely.

Teaching English literature is what comes naturally to you and what you love and why you are here. Not just here today, but here on this here earth. When doubts or anxiety come, all you have to do is remind yourself why you do it or at least remember why you started doing it. Find a way to inject into your class what really matters to you, what burns you with curiosity and interest, your ultimate concerns.  If you have a choice, teach a book that has touched you deeply in some way. Be personal. Be creative and surprising within the constraints placed around you. Become a student along with your students asking questions and pointing the way rather than providing answers. Become an educator in the old Latin meaning of the word: e-ducare. To draw out. Rejoice in the ambiguity that good books create and draw out from your student responses that are uniquely his or her own. Create a space of trust in your classroom where students can speak freely about what they have read and how it intersects with their lives and aspirations, their fears. Give them permission to think, speak and write freely.

And don’t be afraid to see that the answer to the question as to why you do what you do, the only answer that will give you the energy and peace you need, is a spiritual answer. It is whatever you believe one needs to live on besides bread. Once you have that answer firmly in place, then you don’t have to talk about it. You can just carry it locked up in your heart. It will be a light shining within you. The beautiful thing about teaching literature is that your students will see and recognize and be affected by that light without you saying a single word about. If you have it, they will see it. Don’t worry about all the external restraints, all the ulterior motives. Play your game within the bounds imposed upon you. The writing and teaching of literature will go on in one form or another. I guarantee it. We do not live by bread alone. And literature will always be the manifestation of that truth. All you have to do is teach with joy and purpose and offer your work as a free gift to your students. The rest will take care of itself.

 

February 23, 2012

Why Am I on This Planet?

Filed under: Religion,Teaching,Uncategorized,Writing,Young Adult Literature — Francisco Stork @ 5:46 am

That’s the question that I was asked by a young person recently. What would you say if you were asked this question by someone whose life depended on the honesty of your answer? All answers to this question are so . . . poor (it’s the best word I can come up with). Here’s what I struggled to say. I share this with you not without fear.

I don’t know where to start. The question is like a Zen Koan, so very complicated and so very simple. And like a Zen Koan the mistake we make is to look for an intellectual answer, something we can put in words and impress people with our brightness. Actually, the answer is more like an experience, a new way of seeing and it is one of those things that if you can name it, you probably don’t have it. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to try to communicate as best as possible this experience. Being a seeker (like you are) has consequences. One of the consequences is that if you don’t share what you find in some form or another you’re going to be unhappy.

What I have found is that there are times in my life when I experience something that is unique but also part of a greater whole shared with everyone and everything else in this universe (Maybe our question should be why are we in this universe?”). The best way I can describe this experience is that it is something like what I have experienced in other realms of life and which we call love. The experience is one of being loved and of loving. It is an inward and outward movement, like breathing or like the heart’s pull and push motion.

Why I was put in this planet is to realize completely and always that my true self is this ever flowing fountain of love. For some reason, realizing this full time is not easy. There’s another part of me that doesn’t want to live and operate out of this loving region. I’m not sure why this struggle was built into the system and why this other part exists at all. I have some clues, but that may have to be another e-mail if you’re still e-mailing me and I haven’t scared you off, which, trust me, is a real possibility. I don’t know you and I don’t know at what part of your journey you’re at, but the very fact that you are asking why tells me that you’ve started. The one thing I do know about the struggle to live in love is that for that to happen that other part of me has to surrender it’s claim to be number one and accept it’s role as a servant of the source, the true self, that I am.

So that realization of who I truly am is one side of the coin of why I’m on this planet. The other side of the coin is the expression of that realization in the particular circumstances of my life. This part is related to the “uniqueness” piece contained in the experience of love. This part has to do with discovering and using that uniqueness. How are you going to express the love that you truly are in a way that only you can express. Until not very long ago, I used to think that writing novels was my uniqueness, my gift, and it is only lately that I’ve discovered that my gift is teaching. Teaching includes writing young adult novels but it is broader than that. Teaching sounds pedantic, and preachy and even a little arrogant. You know, the teacher is “better” than the student, the teacher is supposed to know more than the student. But the kind of teaching I’m talking about requires a skill and a mastery that I am still working on, and most of all it requires humility. The good teacher is not just interested in filling the student’s head with information but in drawing out what is unique and universal in that student. Writing for me is the best tool for that and so I write for young people, about young people to walk with them as a fellow seeker, to humbly walk beside them toward the discovery of our true self and and the unique gift each one of us has received.

November 24, 2011

Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Speech

Filed under: Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award,Awards,Teaching,Uncategorized — Francisco Stork @ 6:22 am

This is the acceptance speech I gave at the NCTE/ALAN conference two days ago upon receiving the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award. I should say that this is the speech I planned to give since in the actual delivery of it, I got a little rattled and choked up and left out or added words here and there.

Thirty six years ago a couple of months from the end of my senior year at Spring Hill College, a small Jesuit institution in Mobile Alabama. I got a letter informing me that the Danforth Fellowship had been awarded to forty-five college seniors out of five thousand or so applicants. The letter went on to tell me that I was number forty-six. I stared at the letter for a few moments. I sighed. The letter seemed to fit perfectly with the story of my life. The fellowship, which covered tuition and living expenses for four years of graduate studies to seniors who intended to go into college teaching after obtaining a Ph.D., was one of the most coveted and prestigious national scholarships. The recipients could take their money and pretty much go wherever they wanted. I had sent in a last minute application at the insistence of David Sauer my English professor and creative writing mentor after I confessed to him that I had no idea what I was going to do after graduation. “You can learn to write in graduate school,” David advised.

A week later another letter from the Danforth Fellowship informed me that one of the forty-five had decided to accept a Fullbright Fellowship instead. I don’t know who that fellow was or where he is now, but every once in a while when I list the many blessings in my life his anonymous name comes up.

I also sometimes find myself reviewing those moments when a life changing, life-directing choice was made. Four years or so after the receipt of those letters, I wrote a very painful letter to the Director of the Danforth Fellowship informing him that I was leaving Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to attend Columbia Law School. Somehow or other, I wrote in the letter, I would find a way to fulfill the commitment to teach.

Well twenty-five years of practicing law went by and then one day I found myself writing a book about a young man growing in the projects of El Paso. I was writing the book so that my then teenage children could see a side of life that they had never seen before. But it occurred to me as I was writing it that I was, in my own way, teaching and that maybe I had found a path to fulfilling that long ago promise to the Danforth Fellowship.

I mention this episode of my life because I wanted to give you some context to how touched I am at receiving this award. And my appreciation comes not just from the fact that a book about a friendship between a young man set on revenge and a young man with cancer was deemed to contain a “positive approach to life.” It is based also on the fact that this award was picked by a group of people with a commitment to teach. This recognition by teachers and librarians means so much to me because I would like to think that this group recognized in my book values that are worth teaching.

It’s not really cool for a writer of young adult literature to confess that his books are motivated at least partly by an intention to teach. Such a confession creates horrible images of pedantic, preachy, boring books. I think that one of the reasons authors are so reluctant to admit to a “teaching” intention is because they have forgotten about the best teachers in their lives.

As I read the books of my fellow finalists in anticipation of this conference I was amazed at the fast, page-turning, pace of their books. I found all kinds of humor: Laugh out loud humor, dry, subtle humor, humor that suddenly revealed unexpected depth. I also found in these books the presence of the teacher, a good teacher, the kind of teacher that, if we are fortunate, we have had at least once in our lives. The teacher who not only conveys information but who elicits insight, the teacher who not only answer our questions but who confronts us with mystery, the teacher who makes us think and makes us feel. And indeed, when I read their bios, I saw how the important part that teaching played and in some cases still plays in their lives. If you haven’t read their books, read them and see if you can find the good, the wise, the kind, the invisible teacher and maybe you will agree with me that maybe, just maybe, in picking these books, the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Committee decided to send a powerful, important message.

So thank you Jordan, Matt, Matthew, Kristen for your effort. I look forward to continuing to learn from you. Thank you Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic for publishing the kind of books I like to write, I need to write, I’m called to write. Thank you Cheryl Klein, my dear editor for helping me to discover what I truly want to say and the most interesting way to say it. Thank you, Jill, my wife, whose example of good teaching I see every day. And thank you Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Committee for recognizing the teacher in me.

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