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Erica Jacobs

Education Examiner
Erica Jacobs is the Education columnist for the DC Examiner, and has taught high school and college for 33 years. She has been around the education block! Email her at ejacob1@gmu.edu.

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Endings

April 30, 8:22 AM
by Erica Jacobs, Education Examiner
 
 
Last night I taught my last Advanced Composition class of George Mason University's semester. I end the class with a paper on endings--a fitting conclusion that is always ironically juxtaposed with the reality of the last night, when half the class shows up late and all of them want to get out of there as soon as possible! For many of them, class is an intrusion on their home life, their work life, their social life.

Set that against their papers, which speak eloquently of other sorts of endings: relationships breaking up, friends or loved ones dying, leaving home, the event where they lost their innocence. They write elegiacally about these losses, resurrecting them in their prose with concrete, and very poignant details. They write about the symmetry or endings, or their lack of symmetry, and how important it is to end things well--whether it be a marriage, a friendship, or a life.

Yet on the last class it's the classroom version of "Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am," as they turn in their papers, perhaps ask about their grade, or--in the boldest case--inquire, "I am getting a B, aren't I?"

A class is not a very important part of life and that accounts, in part, for the hurried nature of its end. But it still struck me last night that often theory and reality don't mesh, and this is one example.

There were a couple of exceptions, though, where students clearly grew as writers and wanted me to know how much the class meant to them. That's always a gratifying moment. When that evolution happens to a student it's often serendipity (a possible word of the day!); my class happens to occur at the moment when that student is ready to write with wisdom and grace. I do very little to "teach" that sort of student; I just stand back and applaud. That's the best ending of all.


Topics: student , endings , GMU , class , papers
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