Teaching and writing is love and precision:
Interview with Abe Louise Young
In early April 2006, WKCD interviewed Abe Louise Young about the links between writing and teaching. Poet Alan Shefsky, a friend of Young's who conducted the interview, has been in daily correspondence with her for six years about the writing process.
WKCD: What makes a good teacher of writing?
YOUNG: I think it's important for English teachers and writing teachers in high schools to be writers themselves. When I say "be writers," I don't mean "publish their work and get recognition." I mean have a relationship with words that's loving, excited, and special. Take the time—make the time—to be engaged in a creative process. There's always struggle—the fear, the blocks, the breakthroughs. If teachers can't remember how powerful a process writing is, they're not good guardians of that door for younger people. A teacher who is defeated about writing will inspire children to torture themselves over words. A teacher who's excited about writing will be a conduit for students to grow like wildfire in self-discovery.
Also, I think a good teacher of writing invests in relationships. To work with a piece of student writing over and over again until it's right—rather than putting a comment on it and calling it a day—is investing in a relationship. To kneel down beside a sullen student and ask them what's wrong, then say: Write about that, is investing in a relationship. Students respond to relationships more than to any instruction.
Other than that...unabashed love. Precision. Being unafraid to tell people what you think about their ideas and work, but being gentle enough to do it with respect for the limits they're working within.
WKCD: What are some things that you've learned from your students? Anything completely surprising?
YOUNG: With students, I learn about my own limitations and fears, and potential. I'm learning with them. When I walk into a classroom, I see a group of strangers and register all of my stereotypes and projections about them. Just like we do walking down the street and seeing people we don't know. This one's too depressed to reach; this gangster-type probably hates me; that's a highly obedient girl dreaming over by the window. Then, when the writers start sharing their work out loud, those stereotypes shatter. They become people with their own stories. It sounds silly, but I'm always surprised at people's complexity. It's endless. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to cross the threshold of the classroom—a field of possibility—to encounter it.
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I've also learned that people have very different audiences in mind when they pick up a pen. Being schooled in the Western literary tradition, I have a distinct audience of ancient literary ancestors and contemporary radicals that I'm hoping to please and converse with. Other people start in totally different cultural traditions, with different imagery, different audiences, different goals. I've learned that the less I impose my own expectations (beyond the general expectation of dazzling and hard work), the more freely students explore their own audiences and inner worlds.
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WKCD: How do you encourage students who are reluctant to write, who say they "aren't creative" or that just don't have anything to say?
YOUNG: Slide in the back door with something easy. Break it into bite-sized pieces. Making lists is a good way to start. I might ask that student to make a list of everything in their room, or all the red things they own, or what cooking in their house smells like. Things they hate or love. Then, tell me everything you know about that.
Atmosphere is important: Make it feel like something that's theirs. Create a special relationship. Turn down the lights in the classroom and put on soft music, or go outside.
Another strategy with students who are alienated from writing is to have them record themselves talking, or interviewing someone—then transcribe it. Sometimes the gap between talking/thinking and writing is overwhelming. The mind isn't always connected to the hand. If their words get onto paper a different way, then they'll have something to work with. They may be very surprised to see what their words look like written down. And that you start to build that pathway between the brain and the fingers, the talking self and the writing self.
If the block is emotional—I'm not a good writer, I suck, people will laugh—then I think that the "workshop" process helps. Set up the classroom at a certain time to celebrate and hear each other. People write, then read aloud, get applause, and some flash responses pointing out interesting things in their pieces. One session of seeing others read aloud and get positive feedback will often cure a fear barrier; even people who don't identify as writers want to be recognized and clapped for. (Writers, of course, are insatiable for it.) This workshop time doesn't replace concentrated feedback and critique. It's not meant to make everything roses, but to fertilize the soil so that new vines do grow. Then the training, pruning, day-in and day-out work of becoming better writers and thinkers is rooted in a sense of purpose and audience.
WKCD: You must also have students who share stories that are very personal, perhaps very painful. How do you handle these kinds of situations?
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YOUNG: These situations are really precious. When one person shares a painful story, the class deepens and everyone feels more permission to be real, to stretch themselves. With high school students especially, who carry a huge amount of emotional turmoil, when one person sticks their neck out and gets a caring response, then everyone else feels safer. Usually, the other students will do the work that's needed there: recognizing the writer, supporting them empathetically. As a facilitator I'd ask, Can anyone relate? I'd also work to keep focused on the piece of writing as a crafted work, and not a reflection of reality. Bring it back to the page: images we liked, or places that we need more information, or a metaphor that was moving. That takes the pressure off the writer, and returns the focus to the work.
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WKCD: How do you tailor your teaching to the particular needs of the students and the particular settings?
YOUNG: I use poems to start off teaching writing—poems are like portholes into deeper communication. They're short, intense, and the language has energy, and there's a window to a higher message. If the students are dancers, I'll bring in poems about bodies. If they're incarcerated kids, I might bring in poems written by people in prison, or about different meanings of freedom. If they're older people, poems about the passage of time, memory, or family relationships. There is a poem or book about everything under the sun. It's improvisational. The poems are just kick-offs—I don't analyze them much at the start, but guide folks to dive through the porthole that's opened in the room. We start writing after reading a poem out loud together.
I find it's important to bring poems written by African-Americans if the students are African-American, or by Asians if the students are Asian. Being a white American myself, I try to do this humbly and vocalize my possible idiocy, while offering what I've brought in a spirit of exploration.
Since writing is communication, there's something similar about every setting. The questions: Who are you? How do you relate to the subjects at hand? What do you want to say? How do you want to say it? These are questions we'll never stop finding the answers for. Teaching and writing are two of the most satisfying ways to inquire.