Break Out the Tap Shoes

Okay, so I'll admit that the classroom is all wrong. I'm teaching on the bottom floor this semester, in a squared-off white-block room primarily reserved for criminal justice classes. The residual vibes are hinky. When I enter the room, my mind seizes, all those shadow words about police procedure jamming my normal thought processes. My creative feelers are sticky from the nasty web in the doorway.

I'll also admit that the class is at 2:30. The grayed-out sky doesn't help. The students (and I) have too much to do.

But, come on...an eye roll? Really?

My class in the white-block room is called Teaching Writing, a course designed to help future teachers reverse the negativity many students feel about writing. My syllabus argues that words and ideas can change the world. I do believe in the transformative power of writing, just as Professor Keating does in Dead Poets Society. Mentally, I rip, rip, rip the formalist pages out of J. Evans Pritchard's Introduction to Literature. I throw my ideas about teaching writing into the air, hoping that they break open in front of my students' eyes, that at least one idea will be carried home to sprout.

Tonight I'm feeling like the room won.

Next week I'll go back, carrying my passion for writing like a disfiguring hump on my back. "Look at me!" I'll cry, just before I strap on my shiny black tap shoes.