Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

a human being living in this world – I never did as a teacher,
at least not fully.
Although I did grow used to teaching those “strangers” who
were my freshman writing students semester after semester, I
don’t know if I ever became comfortable with it – with the
Uncertainty that a new semester’s course full of those
“strangers” represented to me. Because of this, I believe that,
over the years since I first began to teach all those years ago
now, I adopted habits that I felt, unconsciously, would shield
me, save me, from that Uncertainty. From the disdain. From the
languor. From the apathy, worst of all. I no longer had the
students push their desks into a semi-circle so they could see
each other when they spoke during discussions but, instead,
allowed them to stay in the rows they had found those desks in.
I stood behind a lectern or podium or even a table rather than
sitting among the students. My class notes were carefully
planned and outlined very neatly upon a yellow legal pad, my
questions and when to ask them noted very prominently so I would
have no problem seeing them from where I stood. When I came to
the class days scheduled for “peer review,” I would separate the
students into groups of my own already-determined choosing and
then hand out their “Peer Review Questions,” but, thereafter,
what happened was up them. I told them that it was their
responsibility to get the responses and feedback that they
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