A Physicist Dog-Walker

My most heartening teaching moment this fall came from working in the State Correctional Institute in Pittsburgh. My co-teacher, Mike Bennett, and I led a class on characterization and scene setting.

We laid out the glossy heads of rock stars and soldiers, teen girls and amputees, and asked the men to pick one character to write about. The first takers in the all-male class tried to pick out the most masculine figures—“I gotta go with the boxer”—but I was happy to see a couple of guys grab pictures of women, a hippie girl in a poppy field, a serious intern at a sewing machine.

Mike and I also grabbed our pens and creased our notebooks. We decided early on we wanted to write with our students. (It beats staring, bored, at them while they work.) Before writing, though, we had a short conversation about how to bring a character to life just by asking questions. What is your character wearing? Is their head shaved? What do you think they do for a living? Emphasis on conversation. Mike and I, and our other co-teacher Sarah Shotland—absent this class—never lectured to the men. For one, discussion is much more productive than authoritarian teaching, but, for two, our students are already pros.

We have a class full of amazing writers. One student, Malakki, serving life, just wrote his own op-ed piece proving with efficient data, biting commentary, and personal narrative why he should be considered for parole. Others describe the prison atmosphere, cells, the grounds with enough sensory detail to put Capote to shame. Sometimes, as far as teaching goes, it’s just about giving names to techniques students already use—controlling metaphor, refrain, point of view.

When I mentioned defying stereotypes, throwing out the notion that you want your characters to be strange, the guys perked up. A couple of them seemed to genuinely be hearing something new. It was a moment of improv for me. I just knew I wanted to address stereotypes. Prison does have a culture that encourages strict boundaries and labels. But I didn’t really know what I was going to say about it. The idea partly came from our program director, Sheryl St. Germain’s, line, “Revise into strangeness.” Strangeness seemed the best way to describe how you want to surprise the reader with characters who defy expectations: a physicist dog-walker. And when the men did write, and share, they kept mentioning the word “strange” before reading their pieces aloud. Hearing this gave me joy.

The moment was so refreshing because I often struggle with explaining concepts clearly enough so others understand what’s in my head. Shoot, sometimes I have to break it down to my own self. Forget le mot juste for writing. Teachers struggle to find the right word all the time. But it was obvious that day that Mike and the guys and I connected as a group. It was obvious they were having fun with the prompt. Thinking of that day gets me through the not-so-smooth graduate program days. When I was in undergrad, my professors told us one of the greatest moments is when the bulb over a student’s head lights up during class. I too can say I’ve experienced this with a student in a classroom, and they were right: it’s wonderful.

Cedric Rudolph

The Poem is A Gun

I’ve come back to ACJ. I taught three semesters and then left. I busied with post-MFA life—multiple jobs, attempting to craft at night, etc. About six months out of the Words Without Walls program, I started to feel disconnected. I didn’t miss poetry. I didn’t miss a classroom. I still, in various realms, had these things. What I missed was sitting in a circle with strong, kind men and women who need this art. Human beings who take a pencil to paper and know each word they craft is a step to recovery, to re-purposing the story they’ve already fallen into.

 What I miss doesn’t compare to what they miss. This month my student walked into the classroom saying he had a terrible week. When asked why, he answered, my mother died. No matter what I teach about the necessity of words, there is nothing to fill this moment.

Still, he comes each week. He is consistently one of the most engaged and dedicated writers. When we tell him it might be too soon he responds I need to get this out. He is brave in a way that embarrasses my own writing.

Two weeks ago a new student joined my class. He is stoic and tall. He looks like a baseball player, the kind who would tuck a mitt into his back pocket and all the girls would watch. His first class he doesn’t talk. When he comes back the following week, he places his notebook in my hands. Half is full. He spends the final hour of class telling me of helping his dying friend in jail, carrying him from cell to cell. He describes the smell of decay, asks, can I write from the perspective of these walls? He leans in close, nervously flips his notebook pages. I think not only of what these men and women miss, but what we miss about these men and women. What we forget. What we never see. He towers over me and his eyes are eager, alive, as he whispers, I’ve had a gun pointed at me. I’m not afraid. I can talk my way out of it. But writing these poems, I’m scared. I’m more scared than a gun right at my chest. I haven’t felt vulnerable in a long time and I can’t stop wanting this feeling now. I can’t stop writing. 

Alison Taverna, teacher

My Shout Out

           I was already at the entrance of the jail, standing at the gate still wondering if I had dressed appropriately for my first class.  I wasn’t allowed to wear jeans, but were khakis too formal?  Should I tuck my shirt in?  Roll up my sleeves?

           This would my first time meeting my students, a group of twenty juveniles being housed in the Allegheny County Jail. “Juvenile” is a justice system term, but they’re just kids. Kids who know just what you’re feeling at first look.  Kids who make inside jokes that soar right over your head.  Kids with wild imaginations and ever-shifting attention spans. 

            It wasn’t their criminal records that intimidated me, but rather the same curious energy I remembered from my high school self that would eat teachers alive for the sake of one joke, or cause a distraction from the class just to test my boundaries.  I refused to be eaten alive, not by a bunch of kids, not on my first day.  I rolled my sleeves up, and pushed through the gate.

            When I walked in, a few of the kids were already in the classroom.  They looked at me from the side, trying to play it cool and gather their first impressions simultaneously. 

“Ay Mr. Mike,” one kid finally blurted, “are you famous or something?”

I blushed immediately.  Cover blown.  Khakis were a bad idea.  I should’ve worn a polo.

“Far from it, boss.” I answered.

“Oh, ok.  Well, when you do become famous…” he paused, and looked me dead in the eye with sparking, charismatic sincerity. “Can you give me a shout-out?”

I laughed, picturing a moment in some obscure future when I’m giving shout-outs during a radio interview.

“I’m going to need to know your name first,” I answered.

I’ve learned so much from these kids in just five weeks of teaching them, that giving them a shout-out has gone from a hilarious notion to a tender reality. 

I want to give them a shout-out for keeping me humble, and teaching me, every week, how lucky I am to live outside the grasp of the justice system.

I want to give them a shout-out for laughing at my dumb jokes, and being patient when I’m struggling to find the right way to explain something.

I want to give them a shout-out for letting me on the secrets of jail terminology, and for warning me to never drink the juice.

I want to give them a shout-out for reminding me how vital and beautiful a mother’s love can be, even when she can’t be with you all the time, or in their case, rarely ever.

I want to give them a shout-out for showing me to how to keep your hope up even in moments of deep despair. 

I can barely call myself a teacher when I leave the jail, because I so often am learning more from them than I could ever teach.  A shout-out is the least I can do.  

Michael Bennett, Juvenile teacher

Idealizations

Before I came to Chatham I watched a documentary about teaching Shakespeare in prisons. Everyone looked happy. Students smiled while they acted and the experience transformed them into beings that had a purpose. Shakespeare erased any crimes they might have committed and made them human again. As an aspiring teacher, I found this to be attractive. It looked easy and benefited everyone involved. Learning is not meant to be contained to a university. When I started attending Chatham, I heard grad students talking about their experiences teaching in the Words Without Walls program. It seemed to be life changing for them and their students were all eager to soak in new knowledge and produce meaningful writing. Somehow, I had come to place teaching in an alternating space on a pedestal.

Since I’ve been teaching at Allegheny County Jail for five weeks, I’ve realized that the pedestal, everyone’s praise of the program, and my anticipations are not what matters here. It’s like praising charity because it makes us feel good or because it’s something we know we are supposed to do. That’s not the point of giving something meaningful to another person. I had idealized what teaching at the jail would be like and this reduced the reality in front of me.

Teaching at ACJ doesn’t work the way that the documentaries show. You can’t just walk in, hand everyone Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” speech, and expect everyone to connect with Hamlet’s distress and need for destruction. My students have such a wide range of unique interests. One likes to cook and read recipes, one enjoys studying spirituality, one wants to create his own business, others have written songs and play instruments. I am not living on a pedestal. Except for the fact that my students vary every week due to their circumstances, this is just like any classroom you may encounter. Anyone could show up in that room with me, every Friday morning. My students could be my cousin or my roommate. Anyone can make mistake. We are all human. This is what Shakespeare had taught me and what idealization had made me forget.

The broad range of interests in the classroom is not something that frustrates me, but something that enriches the environment for everyone. Give them a poem, and each of my students will see something different in that poem. If I tell them to write a letter about how they want to be remembered, it turns out that there are 12 different ways to write a letter. In all my years living in academia, I have never seen so much creativity in one place before. In order to write outside the box, you have to leave it behind.

Now that I have been teaching for a while, I’ve come to find that what really matters in Words Without Walls is much simpler than all the talk of mutual growth for students and teacher; though that is still a huge part of teaching. If I can teach them to write great metaphors, that’s fantastic. If I can broaden and fuel someone’s life-long interests in reading, even better. If I can learn 12 new ways to write a letter, I’m blown away. But my students don’t live their lives in the same way that I do, going about to classes and writing a five-page short story every week about how society has negatively affected our development of sexuality. I find that the greatest thing that I can give to my students is my time. Time for them to see a different room inside the jail. Time for them to think about a poem instead of who their enemies are. My purpose as a teacher has grown from learning this. Teaching isn’t just about handing out knowledge and hoping someone will take it. It’s not just about having a “greater purpose” either. Perhaps it is more about meeting the reality of our experiences. There’s more to teaching that you don’t always get to see. You won’t see it as long as the act of teaching is an ideal raised above our heads. 

Kellyn Yoder, teacher

Announcing The Maenads Fellowship.

We're so thrilled to announce the Maenads Fellowship.  

The Maenad Fellowship Program offers up to twelve fellowships a year to women who are in recovery from substance abuse. Fellows will participate in a twelve-week creative writing seminar on the Chatham University campus.

The seminar offers mentorship and instruction in the following areas:

• Creative writing. You’ll be taught by practicing, professional creative writers in order to generate new creative writing.
• Publication submission and design. You’ll work with professional designers and artists to design a beautiful publication of your work.
• Publicly presenting your work. You’ll have the chance to present your work at a public reading.

Fellows will receive a $500 gift card at the completion of the program. All supplies will be provided, including copies of your published work. Transportation and child-care for those in the Pittsburgh area will be provided.

The fellowships are competitive, and will be offered to those who demonstrate the most promise as writers as well as the highest level of commitment to attending all twelve weeks.

Details of the Spring 2017 seminar:

• Seminars run from Thursday, January 12-Thursday, April 13.
• We meet each Thursday night from 6:00-8:30 pm on Chatham’s Shadyside campus.
• The final reading and celebration will be on Friday, April 14.
• Fellows will receive their $500 compensation at the final event on April 14, along with copies of their published work.

Contact Brittney Hailer at Chatham to apply!  Bhailer@chatham.edu, or click contact us on this page!