Why I Teach

CHRISTOPHER BAKRIGES

Writes pianist Christopher Bakriges: “Clear and Present is inspired by songs and spirit from around the world in celebration of the global humanitarian efforts and achievements of people and agencies working for peace through the universal language of music.”

Christopher Bakriges teaches “The World of Music.”

“Fountain of the Innocents,” Christopher Bakriges Quartet, Clear & Present

CHERYL CLARK

When I was a kid, I would wheel a chalkboard from room to room across the house to teach to an imaginary classroom of students. By pretending to teach such eager pupils, I taught myself school lessons. It was one of my favorite activities (next to pretending I was a librarian). Now I am a teacher, and creative writer. I teach students how to write poems, stories, essays, and whatever form writing takes. I share with my students all I have learned about language, syntax, composition and literature, yet because it is all too easy to stagnate, I am ready to abandon what I think I know to focus on their new voices and approaches— to supplant the worn-out with a newly invented way.

Teaching contemporary writers renews me. I take pleasure in bearing witness to our ever-evolving language in the voices students use. I encourage students to experiment with language in our writing studio to become thinkers who flexibly face the unknown. I urge them to listen intently to each other’s voices. Then I guide them as they compose something they treasure.

Read my poem “Ambergris” here.

JOSHUA COHEN

I teach to share with others what great books (past and present) have given me. I can think of no better forum for learning together than the study of great books. They are our chronicles, our testaments, our songs of innocence and experience. When we read them, we hold a mirror to our lives. But when we read them together, we see our reflected images transformed into reflections of each other’s lives.

JENNIFER COLE

I teach because, like you, I am an artist. Where your medium may be paint and canvas, mine is math and science.  I want to help students to become educated consumers of media, and to give them the tools to make decisions about the many environmental issues facing we humans. I am thrilled to teach students about the natural processes involved in hurricanes, as well as to posit reasons why they are increasing in both frequency and severity. I enjoy discussing the environmental impacts of agriculture, and how we can sustainably grow food for an expanding global population. The complex story of alternative energy and why we aren’t there yet, is both fascinating and far-reaching. And it is exciting to teach students about which materials are most important to recycle. When you hear these stories, you see how the choices you make on a daily basis impact the environment. The education you take away from science classes make you a more impactful member of our society, and I teach because I want to change the world, one class at a time.

CAROL DINE

As a poet who often writes about paintings, drawings, and sculpture that inspire me, I teach to share my passion for art. I select reading and writing assignments that reflect the mutual interest of the professor and the students. The class learns from me ways to improve skills in self-expression while I, in turn,have the pleasure of experiencing their artistic process and growth.

Carol Dine reads from her memoir, Places In the Bone (2005)

JEANETTE LUISE EBERHARDY

I teach to support the development of imagination. As a young child, I felt certain that imagination was my ticket out of difficult circumstances. This early instinct prompted me to follow curiosity. Now curiosity teaches me about navigating that vast territory between the known and the unknown—at  individual and collective levels of experience. After many years in a wide variety of work and world settings, I see how writing supports curiosity. So many of my passions come alive when curiosity and writing dance together. And that is why I teach writing at MassArt.

Learn more about my passion for teaching, writing, and storytelling at Wivinc.com

ROBERT GERST

I teach to inspire students to revere truth and to envision in reality their own authentic selves. The poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “Each life converges to some center.” Dickinson meant that each of us grows out of an identity uniquely our own and that discovering that identity and working creatively from it is, for each of us, powerfully liberating. In writing courses, I try to teach students to migrate to their centers and write prose that is lucid, cant-free, and informed. In film history courses, I seek to demonstrate that yesterday is always present today, that our progenitors inspire and empower. We are able to develop our gifts and potentiate ourselves because  a singular cultural heritage sustains us. Works by visionary artists, writers, and thinkers constitute the core Liberal Arts curriculum. In these joyous, humanizing documents, I want students to discover themselves. I teach literature, writing, and film to preserve a unique tradition that enables all who embrace it to emancipate themselves. I teach to liberate.

The Dying Swan (1917), dir. Yevgeni Bauer

MAX GRINNELL

I teach about cities: I’ve always been fascinated with cities and writings about cities. In Boston, I always ask students what they find compelling or problematic here.

I take my students as they are. I show them how over the ages, across continents, and from numerous vantage points others have viewed cities. Pretty soon those students are enriching the classroom environment with their own perspectives. They are entering the flow and cadence of the city, returning to the classroom to dialogue with Robert Lowell’s poems about the Boston Common and the urban manifesto of Jane Jacobs and others who have meditated on the urban aesthetic.

In the classroom, I share and learn from students while, I hope, they share and learn from me. I try to help them articulate their own reactions and critiques. We enter into a type of scholarly communion that I hope informs their careers as artists. This contact gives me joy. That’s why I teach.

DEBBIE HAGAN

Twelve years ago, I taught writing for the first time to adult learners living in a high-crime, urban area. First day, one student claimed he couldn’t write. I said, Don’t worry. Just tell your story.

First assignment was a personal narrative, and students turned in mostly tragic stories, some involving drug abuse, rape, and gun violence. Of all, I was moved by the story written by the student who “couldn’t write.” He told of growing up homeless, his mother a prostitute and drug addict. They lived under bridges and in abandoned houses. Often he couldn’t go to school. Going to college now, he hoped to give his kids a better life.

With his permission, I shared his story. The class praised him for his honesty and courage. He looked proud, seeing how his voice and story resonated. Years later, when I saw him again, he’d graduated, landed a good job, and took care of his kids. He thanked me for my encouragement and teaching him how to write.

This is why I teach. Writing is a life-changing tool. It gives us strength. It builds connections. It provides hope.

LIN HAIRE-SARGEANT

I teach because

I’m hooked on the fresh smell of unread pages.

Patterns words make

catch me and I just have to shout about it

Hold testimony of the miracle

Pass on the danger and the rapture.

I dive into stories and come out as somebody else

Who wouldn’t want company on that journey?

(Among other classes on literature and writing, Lin Haire-Sargeant teaches Children’s Literature, Playwriting, and The 21st Century Novel.)

PETER KENAGY

Musicians have always taught, one generation mentoring the next. I enjoy the collaboration and interaction that goes on without end.

I teach because my feelings for improv and jazz music exceed my own identity as an artist.

Jazz musician, trumpeter, composer, bandleader, educator, writer of a tune a day since July 16, 2016, Peter Kenagy teaches History of Jazz.

“Angster Dang,” Peter Kenagy

ALBERT LAFARGE

I teach in order to inspire others as others have inspired me. “A teacher affects eternity,” as Henry Adams put it in his Education, and we can never tell where our influence stops. And I teach because it forces me to refine my thinking. In short, I teach for good and selfish reasons.

LISONG LIU

I love teaching because it stimulates interesting ideas and encourages the free exchange of those ideas in classroom. In a small space, we can discuss and comment on anything in the world. As a historian teaching world history, it is my passion to introduce the rich histories of different cultures and communities and to make the past relevant to students’ current life and creative work. The conversations in classroom are exciting because everyone has a different background and accordingly a unique approach toward history. Together we share ideas, seek new knowledge, and learn how to respect each other. Teaching also helps systemize and sharpen my own understanding of a particular subject and enrich my research. Confucius says it so well: teaching and learning complement and enhance each other. In other words, the best way to learn is to teach. Another reason for my love of teaching is that I have had wonderful teachers and mentors in my life. I want to carry on that spirit of close personal attention and boundless intellectual inspiration. The ties between a teacher and a student, I believe, can be one of the most supportive, respectable, and enduring relationships in the human world.

RICHARD MURPHY

“Imagine all of nature waiting for the gift of speech so it can express how bad it is to be a vegetable or a fish.” – Aaron Schuster

I teach writing and thinking because I wish to assist students in their efforts to become educated and not merely trained. Students who come to recognize how vital reading, writing, and thinking are to their imaginations and creative processes never stop their investigations, interrogations, and articulations in both the arts and in writing.

Richard Murphy here reads his poem, “Prologue to the Impossible.”

JUDITH NIES

Writing is visible thought. I teach because I like learning how artists think. Hopefully I help art students put their very interesting thoughts on paper — always challenging but always stimulating.

KARLA ODENWALD

Ever since I was a child I’ve had a strong desire to understand and make sense of the world around me.  I teach to simplify the seemingly complex and demystify the deceptively mysterious for myself and for others. I strive to help students develop the very important habits of observation, analysis, and reflection which will prove very useful not just in school – but throughout their entire lives.  Orderly and logical thinking coupled with passion and creativity can lead artists to create works of depth, beauty and significance. That is why I teach.

MARIKA PREZIUSO

Maybe because I teach Women’s Literature and Literature from Immigrants in America, I often muse about what I have learned about teaching at MassArt. I have certainly learned that, notwithstanding a teacher’s authority and hierarchy, teaching can never be self-reflexive. Good teaching is actually the opposite. When I am teaching best, I “disappear.” I let the students own an intuition I introduced as my own.  I watch as they spin out a metaphor we all shared.

Teaching is steady, slow, collaborative work. It’s gardening or choreography.   Teaching is never a one-woman show.

When students bring their full selves to class, when they debate with passion and respect, when they leave the classroom purposeful, renewed, and reassured that their ideas and work matter, I feel exhilarated.

Teaching engages me as writing does. Ideas that intrigue me assume more complex and interesting shape while I am teaching them. Simple ideas multiply. From one, they migrate into many.  They enter my mindscape deeper than I had ever imagined them going.  That’s why teaching elevates and enriches me.

ELIZABETH HYDE STEVENS

I teach “Thinking, Making, Writing.”

I teach to expand my worldview. As a writer, I spend hours typing away on my laptop at a coffee shop, and sometimes I can get a bit stuck in my own head. The world can narrow and shrink without my even realizing it. Teaching lets me see the world fresh again—through the eyes of others. I learn something new from every paper and every student, and it makes my life infinitely richer. But the best part of teaching is seeing the kind of growth that can take place for a student over a semester. Writing is empowering. If you can write something, you can make it happen. I love it when that possibility opens up for students, when they see where writing can take them. I don’t know how to say it any other way: I’m a better person when I teach.

 LEON STEINMETZ

I believe in order to succeed in any creative endeavor (not just visual arts) three components are essential. The first is insatiably inquisitive intellect, which can be developed by reading the best of the best in literature and philosophy. The second is what Jean Renoir called “an educated eye,” which can be trained by looking at and studying the best of the best in visual arts. And the third is (forgive the “high word”) sensitive soul, which can be nurtured by listening the best of the best in music. With these three components present, an individual even with a modest talent, can go far, while combined with a great talent it’s an assured road to great success (I don’t mean popular or financial, but way above those).

CHRISTOPHER SUTTON

As a life-long student, I teach because it gets me into a classroom without having to pay tuition. As an historian, I teach because ‘we are made by history’ and knowing this empowers us to change the present. As a human, I teach because we desperately need intelligent, engaged, critical, and empathetic world citizens.

CHRISTINE VITALE

Why I love teaching!

The mind is incredibly fascinating and wondrous. As is human behavior. We all share a curiosity in trying to explain why we think, feel, and behave the way we do. I love to teach because this curiosity about the mind is particularly strong in artists where an expression of the ‘self’ is often intensely displayed in the creative process and finished work. Psychology ultimately leads us to accept the human condition with all its potential for struggle and goodness. I believe that everyone possesses an immense possibility for personal growth and betterment and that the study of psychology can contribute to this self-improvement in a powerful way. I consider it a privilege to contribute to a student’s personal growth by sharing my knowledge and love for the field of psychology.