Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

had? Again, what exactly was the problem? It is very simple.
My writing class was not that sort of community and I was not
that sort of writing teacher. Again, I feel that the
philosophies – those of Dewey and Perry and Elbow - that had so
defined my own teaching philosophy and practices were sound.
Furthermore, I feel that my course plan – my readings and films,
my discussion plans, my essay assignments, and even my feedback
to students upon their many drafts – was sound as well, any
logistical bugs aside. But there were things about how I
related to those students in my class and how I allowed them to
relate to each other – or fail to relate to each other – that,
in the end, served to derail those greatest efforts. I did not
realize it at the time, but if I do take, again, that long, hard
look in the mirror, I see it now. Very clearly.
Two chapters ago, I had “confessed” that I loved Certainty.
It was, and is, indeed a truth. I love to be organized and
prepared and I hate disorder around me. When I face unfamiliar
or uncertain situations, I withdraw. Perhaps related to all of
this, I am very shy and subdued around those whom I do not yet
know. This is something that teaching really and truly had
helped me with because it pushed me, trained me, to stand before
veritable strangers and talk and ask questions and fish for
responses. But this said, I believe that, while I did indeed,
in time, come to welcome Uncertainty – as a writer but simply as
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