Payoff

I haven't talked much about the "River Class" I'm teaching that I mentioned back around the beginning of the Fall. That's the nonfiction writing course in which the students are studying the literature and the natural history of our local watershed and writing different kinds of documents that explore and interpret it. On paper, it looks like a great course. At moments, though, the reality of it has made me wonder if it was a big mistake. I know a few people really dislike what we're doing: they signed up for a writing class, and I've made them analyze water samples and take a hike once a week (although they take the hike on their own). They hate the readings we do. I'll admit, the stuff isn't Proust, but it is what people wrote about the local landscapes. Some others are going along with it in reasonably good humor, but I suspect they think what were doing is a little weird, and they just want to survive and get a decent grade. A few appear really interested in what we're doing. Some activities actually do provoke some good discussion, where we accomplish some original and critical thinking about this watershed or about ideas of nature or landscape that influence the way people have viewed and lived in the place. On other days, I feel like I'm trying to lead a discussion in wax museum. I've been feeling better about the class lately, but few weeks ago I'd started to think it was the biggest mistake of my career.

I'm very happy about the class this morning. Yesterday, we completed the capstone activity of the course, a presentation of our data from a day of water testing last month. Each fall, high school students from all around the city take to the streams with test kits and measure different water quality indicators, with some of the more adventurous ones cataloguing the macroinvertebrates inhabiting their waterway. My class joined with them this fall, spending a day running the tests in our classroom on water hoisted by a bucket from the river a hundred yards or so away. With almost no input from me (I wanted them to take the lead and work themselves with things we'd spent the semester talking about), the class prepared a slide show to give at a gathering where all the students involved present their results. How did that go? Splendidly.

Using some cleverly designed charts, along with photos they took themselves, my students created imaginative Powerpoint slides to represent and assess the testing data, as well as to portray how our river is (or more typically, is not) incorporated into campus life. They included snatches of poetry or lines from some essays we read in class to reflect on experiences of the water testing and of living and learning on the banks of a neglected and scorned but still vital river.

Those sponsors of the gathering that I talked to were impressed with what we (a few lonely writers amid throngs of young scientists) did and enjoyed our unique angle on the testing. I was impressed myself. That short time while my students were onstage giving their show felt like a vindication of my efforts in that course. I could see that they (or at least those most active in preparing the presentation--there were slackers) had thought carefully about what we had done, and about the ideas underlying the course (to wit, writing as a way of understanding and dwelling in a place). I taught two other classes later that day, but felt like I was looking down on those from a cloud.

Though it has its rewards, teaching is often a dispiriting and stultifying endeavor. I come away from many classes feeling like I've wasted my time and my students'. But days come along where you can see fruit borne from seeds planted on those trying days that you were sure had been scattered by winds of distraction and miscommunication. And some days, you see that the students have taken the seeds and created a lush and decorous garden, which you had done almost nothing to till or plot. For a humble preceptor, that's about the biggest payoff there is.