From the first Nancy Thompson Harris Award recipient,
Jo Colvard:
The joys of teaching begin with the pleasures of learning, for qui docet discit – or he who teaches learns. And then, as Plato says, “Those having torches…pass them on to others.” All of which sounds rather lofty—if not, indeed, even pompous to the contemporary ear. But, thank goodness, the classroom is somehow still a sanctuary where idealism may abound and where sophistication seldom intrudes. So I learn and I teach and the symbiosis is a joyful give-and-take.
I learn from the English language and from literature and from their proponents, magnanimous colleagues—secondary and professorial –who steep themselves in Beowulf to Virginia Woolf. I learn, too, from my own struggling students who can astound me with their grasp, frustrate me with their lapses, and on occasion delight me with the unintentional humor of their errors.
I try to learn as I teach them. If I could I would repeat endlessly what it is that happens to the astonished student who finally sees for himself. I would duplicate the class that, engaged by the lesson, is surprised by the bell because they have forgotten about time. Hard as I strive to learn from such moments I know that they defy formulation and replication.
And, finally, I learn from that very small group of students who return to tell me that I did prepare them for the demands of college. They tell me what they are reading and what I should read. They send me their published works—a handbook on the feminist revolution, a book of literary criticism published by the University of Chicago Press. They write me letters which begin tentatively: “Are you still there? Do you remember me?” Then they remind me of the day in class I said such-and-such, and I am invariably surprised that what was said in passing was at all memorable.
What I learn, finally, is to respect teaching, not only as joyous, but as a most powerful endeavor as well.
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