The sacred space of writing workshops
Especially in 2020, especially when it's virtual.
Forgive me. I’m feeling sappy today. I think it’s a combination of a lot of things. It’s December, and the neighbors have switched out their Biden and Trump signs for Christmas decorations. It snowed in Nashville for the first time yesterday, and there’s still frost on the grass this morning. Again, it’s December, which feels unbelievable because it means we’re almost at the end of the most tumultuous year that’s felt like a decade on the one hand, and just a few months on the other. The baby, who I’d been saying was born “in the middle of the pandemic,” is exactly 7 months old today, and he’s crawling and eating solid foods. Watching the baby has been a useful indicator of time, when time no longer made sense. The almost-3-year-old is currently playing with his pod buddy at their house just 10 minutes away, and I have a few hours to myself to make my own coffee, sit down in silence, and write this as the baby sleeps in the carrier, his pink cheeks already marked with the knit pattern on my sweater.
Next week also marks the last writing workshop I’ll teach this year, so I’m already feeling sad about not being able to see my students, even though a few of them have said they’ll sign up for more when I come back mid-January.
I didn’t know what to expect from online teaching. I’d never done it before, and I’m more or less an analog teacher. I opted to use print-outs instead of projecting things on a screen (mainly because I could never figure out how to use the projector). I wrote messily on the blackboard or whiteboard, and by the end of each class, the board would look like the walls of a conspiracy theorist with lines drawn between key words and multiple circles around things I kept emphasizing (see evidence below). I always loved the little conversations with students in the hallway or parking lot, in the kitchenette during breaks, or while waiting in line for the bathroom. I loved eavesdropping on my students, once strangers, exchanging numbers and making plans to meet up for coffee.
These are things that are hard, if not impossible, to recreate in a virtual classroom. Sure, I could share my screen and write with my stylus on some drawing app for my students to see. I could use the virtual “breakout rooms” to let students share their writing exercises in groups of 3, just like before. I haven’t done these things, but I have incorporated some techie things like anonymous polls on Zoom, and I’ve allowed students to hang around before and after class-time, just to chat about life and get to know one another. Beyond that, I’ve had to let go of so many things I was used to doing, and in the beginning, I couldn’t help but see these things as irreparable losses.
But over the course of the last several months, the biggest thing I’ve come to realize is the obvious fact that a classroom is about the students, and everything else is ornamental. While there are things we’ve lost, there’s so much we’ve gained. Where once, my classroom consisted of Nashvillians and the occasional Alabamans and Kentuckians who drove three hours just to be there, my classrooms are now filled with students signing in from all around the country—plus an island off of Vancouver! When I ask how they learn about this class, a lot of them say they got here by Googling, and others say they’re fans of Nashvillian author Ann Patchett, who happened to write about The Porch in one of her recent newsletters. Leading up to the elections, the students in Tennessee got to know what things were like in Arizona, New York, North Carolina, Florida, and California. In my parenthood micro-memoir class, I get to see one of my best friends in Brooklyn, while also checking in with a dad friend who I haven’t seen since our son’s 2nd birthday party, even though he lives in my neighborhood.
Something else has changed, which is that for the first time in my teaching career, there’s been perfect attendance every time. For my parenthood students in particular, these two hours a week could very well be the only two hours they get to be alone, without their children or partners, without worrying about their work emails or housework. A lot of them said they signed up for the class as a form of self-care. There’s a group of three women who have been friends for 15 years, who signed up together as a way of reconnecting and getting to know each other on an even deeper level.
My lessons were once planned down to the minute, especially when I taught undergrads. Over-planning felt good. My feedback on student submissions used to be comprehensive. There would be line-comments plus a long letter at the end detailing options for how to go about revision. I’d spend a minimum of an hour on each student, per draft. (It was crazy. Also, I didn’t have kids back then, or I had a lot more childcare.)
Now, my lesson plans are 3-5 bullet points, and one of them just says: 5-min break.
To be honest, this parenthood micro-memoirs class has been the easiest to plan and teach. I almost feel bad that they have to pay for it. At the same time, I’m realizing that the detailed lesson plans and heavy commenting may not have actually helped, in the end. It may have even hurt some of my students, who came away overwhelmed. (I think I would have, if I were my own student.) I’m having yet another cliched realization, which essentially boils down to: less is more.
The thing is, you can’t plan for conversations, the same way you can’t go into a coffee date with a script of how you and a friend are going to talk. The only thing to plan is the time and space.
I feel especially selfish in the parenthood class because it’s also been a sacred space and ritual for me, not only as a teacher but as a parent of two small children. Two-thirds of my students have children that are 8 or older, and they’ve reassured the newbie parents by saying that toddler tantrums are completely normal, that none of our kids are going to be sociopaths even if they seem like it now, that they’ll eventually grow up to be lovely people—and that of course, in lieu of tantrums, we’ll have bigger things to worry about like dealing with puberty and having tough conversations about the world they live in. What a relief to know that I haven’t permanently damaged my toddler when I abandoned him in his room in the middle of a meltdown, just a few hours before starting class. What a strange feeling, that they’re my students when in this case, it actually feels like it should be the other way around.
It feels wrong to talk about the silver linings of a pandemic when so many people have lost their lives and jobs and entire lifestyles, but the existence of virtual classrooms saved me from what would have otherwise been a bleak and hopeless year. This is one of those things that I hope to continue offering, even if The Porch opens up its physical headquarters again to Nashvillians. The virtual space is one I’ll cherish even then.