Finally finished “The Origin of the Work of Art,”
which is not an essay but a confrontation:
you have to be engaged with it at all times to see
what is being said, to see even a part of it,
only sixty pages long but taking me two weeks
to read. Yesterday on the first day of class,
after thinking so long over break about some
nasty student evals I received, how to get better
as a teacher, how to get more out of my students,
specifically how to make them feel more
comfortable while still pushing them,
as the #1 complaint is always that I am not
“sensitive to students’ needs,” I was confronted
by students already looking away when I
made eye contact or just staring into space
as I spoke, still staring into space when I returned
my gaze to them half a minute later, and
I could feel my frustration creeping in again,
all the hopeful theorizing I’d been doing
about how best to help these students being
met, on the first day, with anxiety, insecurity,
boredom, indifference, though my energy level
and enthusiasm were higher than usual,
and “enthusiasm for the material” is always
my highest mark on evals, begrudgingly
marked 4 out of 5 by even the most hateful
students, and I joked how already I was
seeing people stare off into space, saying,
It’s only the first day of class, people!
using a little sarcasm, then I caught myself,
because I vowed to try to be less sarcastic
this semester, more direct and sincere,
and I made a point of saying something about
what class participation means to me: you
don’t have to talk all the time but you do
have to be engaged, which starts with looking
at someone when they’re speaking, beginning
with the teacher: it’s just rude, isn’t it,
not to look at someone when they’re talking
to you? We all know this outside of class
but for some reason in class we think it’s okay.
After that all the students started to look
at me when I spoke, one girl in particular
who was flustering me by staring into space
began speaking a lot, this worked so well
I think I’m going to make a point of putting
it down as an official policy on my syllabus.
On the current student evals my university
employs, the students are asked at the top
of the form to evaluate themselves first,
whether they tried their best to learn
the material, whether they took from the course
skills they can use, and they always rate
themselves highly, on average usually 4.5
or higher out of 5, never once have I seen
any students rate themselves lower
than a 3 (neutral) out of 5, even though
some failed to turn in multiple assignments.
And, I don’t know, this seems to me to be
um, what, disappointing? This total lack
of accountability on the part of people
entrusted to hold me accountable?
They are prompted by the system to confirm
their accountability first, then given free rein
to attack me personally with no accountability
whatsoever. At least my name is by their grades.
And my job, ultimately, as a non-tenure-track
prof, is always on the line when I give out
bad grades that have been earned for poor work.
And I have long experience and expertise
in evaluating this particular work of writing
that they do, which is why I was hired.
But what experience or expertise do they have
in evaluating teaching, my body of work,
especially bad students? They naturally just
record what they thought of me as a person,
or compare me, perhaps, to some other teacher
or class in which they had a more favorable
experience. And of course by favorable
what we’re talking about here is a good grade,
without fail every class I’ve taught
in which I’ve given higher grades netted
marks on evals that on average were higher.
I don’t think I’m a better teacher in those classes
in which I’m rated higher, if anything I think
I’m worse, as the students seem to be performing
well without much need of help from me.
There is always an unraveling that happens
out of pure beginnings, as I have just read
about again in Mary Ruefle’s “On Beginnings,”
which I’ll be teaching to my Intro to Creative Writing
students, even this very sentence is an illustration,
as I had the pure beginning of the phrase
“There is always an unraveling that happens”
as I sat on the toilet just a few minutes ago
and then it took another hundred clauses
just to include the sidebar of the info about
rereading “On Beginnings” and teaching that.
We have an idea how to change things,
a new hope, as Star Wars might say, and then
we start to move through time and interact
with other people and pretty soon the Death Star
detonates that hope from a million miles
away. On the second day of Intro to Creative Writing
I come in prepared to talk about my engagement
policy then lead a fun abecedarian exercise
but before I can even talk about engagement
a new student who missed the first day of class,
looking like he’s just emerged from the sleep
that caused his absence, starts doodling as I speak,
even after I’ve just made a point of introducing
him and—when everyone sat there awkwardly
without greeting him—prompted the class to say hello.
Already the unraveling is happening and the class
hasn’t even begun, this dude comes in having missed
the first day, gives zero fucks about what he missed
and proceeds to ignore me by doodling.
Imagine showing up one day late for a new job
or an appointment or a date or your own wedding
and immediately starting to doodle when the person
you’re there to see speaks. The behavior is absurd,
but we’ve come to accept it, and I’ve had it.
I suddenly have the memory of balancing
my checkbook at the beginning of a teaching
practicum—oh the irony—I took my first year
in the PhD program at the University of Missouri,
I had contempt for the class as I’d already had
a practicum in my MFA program and had been
teaching for four years and the teacher leading
the class wasn’t giving us any practical tips
for teaching but just going over pedagogical theory,
which is so useless for your particular classes,
i.e. reality, so I’d decided to tune out in class
and mock it and the teacher any chance I got,
and on this day I really needed to balance
my checkbook for some reason, and the teacher,
probably raised to a boil of fury as she noticed me
doing this for several minutes, finally snapped
at me and told me to put my checkbook away
and I did, shamed. She was right to do that.
I was extremely rude for doing what I did.
But why has no teaching practicum I’ve taken
talked about engagement, setting ground rules
for how teacher and student interact with each other,
starting with looking at each other as we speak?
The concept feels oddly revolutionary.
When I notice this new student doodling
I immediately address the matter of engagement,
asking everyone to look at the person speaking
unless you’re taking notes, and I ask him,
Oh, wait, were you taking notes? And at first
he nods, thinking of lying, but then I say,
Or…no? and he says, No, I was just doodling.
He already seems to resent me a little
because he’s being singled out, and I say,
You probably think I’m rude for singling you out,
trying to preempt this notion, and he says no,
but we’ll see. After that everyone in class
looks at me as I speak, there’s a new energy
in the room as I’m guessing none of them has ever
heard a teacher say this before, as I have not,
and I ask them to write down some things
they look for from a teacher, some standards
they want a teacher to meet, we’ll make up
our common ground of engagement together.
And the list is amazing: relatable, enthusiastic,
passionate, cool, respectful, patient, fair,
challenging, knowledgeable, understanding—
amazing because even as I demonstrate
to students that I’m “enthusiastic,” “passionate”
and “challenging,” they bludgeon me on evals
if they don’t think my grading is fair.
I tell them if they think of anything else
they should tell me, that we’re going to hold
each other accountable and try to get better
every day, as LeBron James likes to say,
that we’re going to approach the classroom
as a space of engagement, turning on our best selves
when we walk through the door, coming in
with intensity, purpose, enthusiasm, curiosity,
care, patience, understanding, good humor,
that we’re going to put in the time outside
the classroom as well, so that the time we have
together inside the classroom is energized.
Most are listening intently though I notice
new guy shuffling his feet and looking away
as I speak, seeming physically uncomfortable;
I can tell he’s going to be a bit of a problem,
he seems to have dumped himself here
as a place where he expects nothing to be
expected of him and he can just doodle
his time away when he’s not high, as he seems
most likely to be. Already an unraveling
and we’re in the first week of class, by March
time will have taken over and all the weight
of students’ other obligations and the shit they have
to deal with personally, they’ll have gotten
writing back with comments that discourage them,
some will decide they just don’t like me
and don’t care about my engagement policy,
some will decide creative writing isn’t that
important to them, they were just doing it for fun,
they didn’t sign up for all this work. The sag
is inevitable, and then the rationalizations,
the wriggling free of accountability, even as
you hold the person you blame for your troubles
accountable. And so LeBron talks to the media
about how he has never undermined a coach,
never gotten a coach fired, which I’m sure
he believes, even though he did several different
things over the course of one and a half seasons
under David Blatt that got him fired, incredibly,
last Friday, with the Cavs in first place at 30–11
in the Eastern Conference with the third-best record
in the league (though they were 0–3 against
the two teams in front of them), and a Finals trip
under their belts from last season, when, despite
injuries to Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, they came
within two wins of beating a historically great
Golden State team. All the reports (from anonymous
sources) were that the players didn’t like or respect
Blatt, despite the winning record, that there
was resentment seething in the locker room,
especially from veterans who’d lost playing time
without being told why, that the players thought
he was arrogant about his overseas credentials,
because really he was an NBA newbie, if not
an actual rookie coach—he didn’t know shit
about this league. LeBron never bought into
his Princeton offense, so he just ditched it
without asking for permission early last season;
to be fair that offense probably wasn’t going
to work with the personnel the Cavs had then,
but still LeBron was clearly undermining
the coach when he did this, then told
the media he was at that point in his career
where he didn’t have to ask for permission
anymore. Just as he was undermining the coach
when he told the media he’d “scrapped”
the play Blatt had drawn up at the end of Game 4
of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against
the Bulls, demanding he take the final shot himself
and burying it, tying the series at two and propelling
the Cavs into the seven-game winning streak
that got them to the Finals. Of course you could
argue—and I’m sure LeBron does this in his head,
if not to friends—that he wasn’t undermining
his coach if he was helping him get wins,
which he was, because if Blatt had lost more
regular season games with an offense that wasn’t
working, or had lost Game 4, which he almost did
by calling a timeout he didn’t have—saved only
by his replacement, Tyronn Lue, who caught him
before the refs noticed—he certainly would
have been fired last season. And maybe it’s true
that the real problem with Blatt was that he wasn’t
holding LeBron accountable, that he pandered
to him too much, because LeBron clearly has a problem
holding himself accountable. But firing Blatt
hasn’t made that problem go away, as evidenced
by LeBron telling the media he has never undermined
a coach, what was he supposed to do, put away
his huge basketball IQ? Not one word of support
for Coach Blatt from his mouth, not one kind
or sympathetic thing to say, not one word
of gratitude for at least helping the Cavs reach
the Finals in his first year back in Cleveland.
Amazing. Not one word from the other players,
save for Matthew Dellavedova, who thanked
Blatt and said he was a “great person” because
he believed in him last season when no one else
did, which is true, I remember screaming
at Delly every time he turned the ball over
or took a horrible shot during the regular season,
cursing Blatt for overplaying him, then
the playoffs come and Kyrie Irving gets hurt
and guess what shitty guy steps in to fill his role
and makes huge plays to help us win games,
most importantly the two games we win
in the Finals? Delly. We don’t win those games
without him, without Blatt giving him enough
reps and confidence in the regular season
to step in. And now, this year, Delly is one
of our most reliable players, a legit backup PG,
playing so well he’s moved ahead of Mo Williams
on the depth chart, who was signed in the offseason
to replace him. Dellavedova, an undrafted player
not blessed with obvious physical gifts, clearly
holds himself accountable in a way the other Cavs
do not. Being talented, i.e. privileged, lets you
get away with not holding yourself accountable,
or lets you define holding yourself accountable
in different ways, as I’m sure LeBron does with wins,
not by how many ways he undermines a coach.
At least LeBron is uncommonly talented, generally
mans up, backs up his word, puts in the work
and leads his team to victory, if anything he clashes
with coaches because of just how uncommon
his gifts are, his basketball IQ is indeed probably
higher than that of any coach he’s played for,
most of whom have never played in the NBA.
But what of my college students who are
privileged but not uncommonly talented, who
give themselves outs for disrespecting me
or try to get me fired on their evals without
also writing the best poems of their generation?
And what of me, who is also privileged but not
uncommonly talented? I feel for Blatt but
at the same time understand why the decision
was made, at the end of the day the Cavs
are looking to win a title and “pretty good,”
as GM David Griffin said, just isn’t good enough.
Maybe the players were as much at fault
if not more so for Blatt not working out as coach,
but you have to make a change once the resentment
sets in, once the relationship is ruined,
sometimes the fit is just wrong. And I think—
despite all my growing annoyance with the word
“accountable,” at least how all these people
are using it—maybe my problem is that I am not
holding my students accountable enough,
to the absolutely highest standard, not just a high
standard, as seemed to be the case with Blatt,
he already thought of himself highly because
he’d won titles overseas and is revered in Israel,
he didn’t think he had anything to prove in the NBA,
but that’s wrong, he did, just as LeBron always
has something to prove even though he’s won
two titles now. I am tough on my students
but not tough enough, perhaps, I am in between,
perhaps the “toughness” of my grading comes
off as bias, spitefulness for them not meeting
my lowered standards, my threshold requirements,
rather than holding them to the highest standard.
I have put in the work but have I put in the highest
work, am I committing to that every day?
Perhaps I used to, or try to, but not lately.
When it comes to teaching there are days I let
slide, when I rely on prior knowledge of poems
for discussion instead of rereading them, when
I’m not holding students to the highest standard
but just getting frustrated with them for not talking,
not doing the reading, not following
instructions, those are not the same thing
as coming in with my own mindfulness
about how I can get the best out of my students,
how I can continue to get better, and I know
I have not been doing those things lately, if ever.
Jason Koo is the author of the poetry collections More Than Mere Light, America's Favorite Poem and Man on Extremely Small Island and coeditor of the Brooklyn Poets Anthology. He has published his poetry and prose in the American Scholar, Missouri Review, Village Voice and Yale Review, among other places, and won fellowships for his work from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute. An associate teaching professor of English at Quinnipiac University, Koo is the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets and creator of the Bridge. He lives in Brooklyn.