MY HEART is full of gratitude after the first workshop in my summer writing series, Slow Savor! This was a dream come true, to organize an online writing series with likeminded folks interested in generative writing sessions—to stir creativity in community!
I have teaching roots—my dad was an English teacher—I remember grading his students’ papers at the kitchen table when I was just ten years old! Can you imagine? I read his students’ essays and noted in red ink where they could elaborate or clarify. How absurd that my father trusted me to do this—I guess he needed assistance—but I often trace my teaching desires back to those nights at the kitchen table.
When I was little, I set up a school in the basement for my sister as my sole student. Later, I taught for many years in public schools—as an English teacher, and then as a visiting poet, a teaching artist, a professional development facilitator—but at some point I got burnt out by the work and the conversations that surrounded it. I remember feeling like we all kept saying and insisting on the same concepts and ideas, rarely moving the needle on our collective understanding of teaching or learning when it came to creative writing and the arts in general.
So my heart grew restless. I also started to doubt myself as a writer. It was around this time that my heart started tilting toward the Swahili Coast. I’d gone to Tanzania as a teaching artist and by the time my six weeks were up with the theater project, I’d already decided that if I could stay in that part of the world, I would do everything in my power to make it happen. A few months later, I packed up my life in Chicago and off I went to learn Swahili.
I was lucky to find work in a teaching-adjacent role at the local university as a resident director, hosting American students on language studies programs in Zanzibar. But I stopped teaching directly with students around that time, and of course, I started to miss it. I organized a monthly poetry series in town; I led poetry workshops at the embassy library on campus; I tried to stir up poetry and writing projects in collaborations of various kinds.
But essentially, I would stop teaching, at least in the classic sense, for many years. I drifted into a newsroom and then into a magazine, where my days were spent more on editorial workflows and calendars than curricula building and students’ work. I remembered fondly how I used to lug around my students’ poetry wherever I went in my car, reading and organize it, editing and publishing it. Those days were behind me, and I started to feel distanced from it.
After a while, for obvious reasons, I became totally disillusioned by the news and digital media in general. I wondered why and how I’d strayed so far away from my teaching roots—I used to love curriculum talk and building worlds with others through the arts—what was I doing now?
Last June, an unexpected invitation to New Mexico reacquainted me with my teaching self—I was asked to lead a weeklong creative nonfiction writing seminar as part of a larger anthropology collaboration with the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. At first, I felt a bit like an imposter—who, me? Yes, you, was the reply. I am grateful for a colleague who trusted me to lead and teach a series of workshops on the fine art of creative nonfiction writing for academics.
And I LOVED it. The experience totally energized me and reoriented me in the direction of teaching and learning. I still stumble sometimes to reconcile the past me with the present me when it comes to my teaching and leading self, but I’m so happy to know that this spark and desire to teach, learn, and write in community still glows inside me, and when I’m doing this work, my heart always feels full.
After Santa Fe, I started to offer more workshops around ideas that inspire me—letters, time, memory, symbols, space, consciousness—and it’s reassuring to know that when I follow my heart, I continue to connect with folks willing to meet me there. I’ve led writing workshops at my local library, at my local book and paper arts center, and now online, through this series I’d been thinking about for months and finally decided to just go ahead and try it.
I’m so very thankful for everyone who took time out of our busy days to pause, slow down and savor the writing process together—writing is lonely and mysterious, writing is strange and stirring, writing is joyful and relieving—it gives me hope to know that I’m in the company of others in this lifelong dance with the written word.
It takes courage to put something out there—a class, a series, a story, a poem, an idea—and sometimes I struggle with self-doubt around it all—who will read this, who will want this, who will care, there’s so much out there already, what do I have to say or offer that can’t be found elsewhere? But I’m realizing over and over again that what YOU put out there IS the greatest gift because it’s coming from you and no one else, and that’s why!
The night before the first workshop in this series, I got a little nervous—not bad nervous, just a little anxious, a little high-energy, a little over prepared, a little jittered and jazzed about it all. And I had to remind myself that even the greats talk about these nerves we all get before we start something new or share something that matters with the world—Ozzy Osbourne said that no matter how many times he performed for enormous audiences, he always got nervous right before a show.
My dad, who played jazz piano nearly every single day of his life, also got the shpilkes every Saturday night, right before his live gig on Facebook during the pandemic. He’d prep and prepare all week, painstakingly select his playlist, research and rehearse over and over again, fully prepared and ready to rumble, and yet, hours before the show, he’d pace the house, a little cranky and a little anxious and super excited, and sometimes kind of hungry, and wondering if he should make a last-minute wardrobe change.
We’ve all been there—we’ve all felt this way—before a big talk, or a performance of any kind, or any time we have to put our hearts out there and say “hi, here I am,” and show up and try and do the best we can with what we’ve got!
So here’s to all of us finding the courage to try—to share—to offer—to grow, because when you do, I do, and vice versa. You know what I mean! I’m excited for the next workshop and the next and look forward to all kinds of future collaborations from this point forward, knowing more concretely now that we already have everything it takes to make it all happen!
I have teaching roots—my dad was an English teacher—I remember grading his students’ papers at the kitchen table when I was just ten years old! Can you imagine? I read his students’ essays and noted in red ink where they could elaborate or clarify. How absurd that my father trusted me to do this—I guess he needed assistance—but I often trace my teaching desires back to those nights at the kitchen table.
When I was little, I set up a school in the basement for my sister as my sole student. Later, I taught for many years in public schools—as an English teacher, and then as a visiting poet, a teaching artist, a professional development facilitator—but at some point I got burnt out by the work and the conversations that surrounded it. I remember feeling like we all kept saying and insisting on the same concepts and ideas, rarely moving the needle on our collective understanding of teaching or learning when it came to creative writing and the arts in general.
So my heart grew restless. I also started to doubt myself as a writer. It was around this time that my heart started tilting toward the Swahili Coast. I’d gone to Tanzania as a teaching artist and by the time my six weeks were up with the theater project, I’d already decided that if I could stay in that part of the world, I would do everything in my power to make it happen. A few months later, I packed up my life in Chicago and off I went to learn Swahili.
I was lucky to find work in a teaching-adjacent role at the local university as a resident director, hosting American students on language studies programs in Zanzibar. But I stopped teaching directly with students around that time, and of course, I started to miss it. I organized a monthly poetry series in town; I led poetry workshops at the embassy library on campus; I tried to stir up poetry and writing projects in collaborations of various kinds.
But essentially, I would stop teaching, at least in the classic sense, for many years. I drifted into a newsroom and then into a magazine, where my days were spent more on editorial workflows and calendars than curricula building and students’ work. I remembered fondly how I used to lug around my students’ poetry wherever I went in my car, reading and organize it, editing and publishing it. Those days were behind me, and I started to feel distanced from it.
After a while, for obvious reasons, I became totally disillusioned by the news and digital media in general. I wondered why and how I’d strayed so far away from my teaching roots—I used to love curriculum talk and building worlds with others through the arts—what was I doing now?
Last June, an unexpected invitation to New Mexico reacquainted me with my teaching self—I was asked to lead a weeklong creative nonfiction writing seminar as part of a larger anthropology collaboration with the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. At first, I felt a bit like an imposter—who, me? Yes, you, was the reply. I am grateful for a colleague who trusted me to lead and teach a series of workshops on the fine art of creative nonfiction writing for academics.
And I LOVED it. The experience totally energized me and reoriented me in the direction of teaching and learning. I still stumble sometimes to reconcile the past me with the present me when it comes to my teaching and leading self, but I’m so happy to know that this spark and desire to teach, learn, and write in community still glows inside me, and when I’m doing this work, my heart always feels full.
After Santa Fe, I started to offer more workshops around ideas that inspire me—letters, time, memory, symbols, space, consciousness—and it’s reassuring to know that when I follow my heart, I continue to connect with folks willing to meet me there. I’ve led writing workshops at my local library, at my local book and paper arts center, and now online, through this series I’d been thinking about for months and finally decided to just go ahead and try it.
I’m so very thankful for everyone who took time out of our busy days to pause, slow down and savor the writing process together—writing is lonely and mysterious, writing is strange and stirring, writing is joyful and relieving—it gives me hope to know that I’m in the company of others in this lifelong dance with the written word.
It takes courage to put something out there—a class, a series, a story, a poem, an idea—and sometimes I struggle with self-doubt around it all—who will read this, who will want this, who will care, there’s so much out there already, what do I have to say or offer that can’t be found elsewhere? But I’m realizing over and over again that what YOU put out there IS the greatest gift because it’s coming from you and no one else, and that’s why!
The night before the first workshop in this series, I got a little nervous—not bad nervous, just a little anxious, a little high-energy, a little over prepared, a little jittered and jazzed about it all. And I had to remind myself that even the greats talk about these nerves we all get before we start something new or share something that matters with the world—Ozzy Osbourne said that no matter how many times he performed for enormous audiences, he always got nervous right before a show.
My dad, who played jazz piano nearly every single day of his life, also got the shpilkes every Saturday night, right before his live gig on Facebook during the pandemic. He’d prep and prepare all week, painstakingly select his playlist, research and rehearse over and over again, fully prepared and ready to rumble, and yet, hours before the show, he’d pace the house, a little cranky and a little anxious and super excited, and sometimes kind of hungry, and wondering if he should make a last-minute wardrobe change.
We’ve all been there—we’ve all felt this way—before a big talk, or a performance of any kind, or any time we have to put our hearts out there and say “hi, here I am,” and show up and try and do the best we can with what we’ve got!
So here’s to all of us finding the courage to try—to share—to offer—to grow, because when you do, I do, and vice versa. You know what I mean! I’m excited for the next workshop and the next and look forward to all kinds of future collaborations from this point forward, knowing more concretely now that we already have everything it takes to make it all happen!
