Welcome

 

My goal is to use this website to collect, share, and reflect on important aspects of my work in the field of German, Gender Studies, and in Faculty Development. If you are interested in anything you find on these pages, please don’t hesitate to comment or to contact me. I believe that our work as faculty and faculty developers depends on and is enriched by collaborations within and across disciplines. Much of what we do is less about the content and more about the ideas, the connections, the conversations, and the communities that we build. Teaching and learning, especially, is about making connections and building relationships, about thinking in new ways and about new ideas.

Teaching Dreams
I
In my meanest dreams,
I am a fiery teacher
who drives knowledge like nails
into students
and who brooks no foolishness.
No student dares to talk
unless I demand an answer.
They sit at attention
in their perfect rows
and listen as I lecture.
I accept typed themes
offered by trembling hands.
I smile and nod
when they thank me
for my rigor.
II
In other dreams,
students refuse to sit down
and will not divulge their names.
They mill about my room,
talking to each other
acting as if I do not exist,
as if my words mean no more
than the buzzing of a fly.
As often as not, they leave class
before I finish,
and I thank them
for hand-scrawled responses
to my assignments.
III
Some nights
students return to me
like salmon to their spawning beds.
They shake my hand
and sit across from me
and tell me what they have done,
what they will soon be doing.
I remember all their names
and just where each one sat
in my classroom.
Still, when they tell me
what they learned,
it’s not what I remember teaching.
Cecil W. Morris, Roseville, CA. The English Journal, Vol. 82, Nr. 5 (1993): 104.