The Show Must Go On (Without Me)

This is another entry regarding the student-driven hybrid fiction course I’m piloting at the moment that is testing both my notions of teaching and my students’ understanding of how the classroom is supposed to look. From time to time, I’ll reflect here on what I’m learning along the way.

When I was a kid, I was a performer. A singer to be exact. I was five the first time I sang in public, 11 when I had my first Peter Brady moment and 18 when I was a small part of a performance in front of more than 100,000 people. And then, singing went away, and not by choice.

I can still remember the doctor telling me, “Well, it looks like you won’t be singing anymore.”

“For how long? A month? More?” I’d had to shut it down before, go on what voice coaches call “vocal rest” while my throat calmed down. I went a week without talking once. Almost killed me.

“No, no more singing. The way your system is, you just aren’t going to be able to sing without ending up doing permanent damage.”

And that was it. No more singing or concerts or that part of me that identified me as the singer. I was lost to say the least.

Years later, I had not found a replacement for that part me, an outlet for the side of me that likes to get up in front of a room and put on a show. And then I found teaching.

Every day, I faced five tough crowds of high school freshmen and seniors, and I did the dance. I taught grammar with stories and literature with jokes. I moved in and out of the desks, singling out students and tailoring a comment just for them before moving back out to the whole room. I shot down hecklers.

The Laugh Factory, it was not. But I was in my element. And that’s still what enables me to enjoy my job. Sure, my audience is older and my jokes include more references to post modern theory, but the basis of my day is the same. I’m on a stage.

Which is what makes my hybrid class so challenging for me. After four weeks of f2f training and instruction on fiction, I turned my class of 20 writers loose for nine weeks, moving into the role of digital management while they own the class experience, shaping it to suit their needs and the needs of the book they are writing collectively.

In essence, I’ve made them the performers and I’m now sitting in the audience. And the shift has been jarring.

But my hope is that in my sitting down, my students will be forced to stand up. And if the part of my new class designed to help students see the marketability of their talents is going to work, I have to do it. 

And take up a hobby to deal with the performance withdrawals.