The Teacher as Writer
by David Schleich

Day after day up there beating my wings With all of the softness truth requires — William Stafford

Teaching, as Parker Palmer puts it, “is a fearful enterprise.” Over many years in various educational systems I have met them. Teachers who, among the thousand things they have wanted for their careers, wanted to be writing, too. I have met those who have published a little, or not at all; those held back by complex, crazy-busy workloads, by family commitments, by professional development work, by timing, by energy, by courage. 

Palmer says that teachers face day after day, year after year, “the perverse but powerful draw of the ‘disconnected’ life.” They teach and learn “at some remove from [their] own hearts,” he writes.

There is a compelling feature of the story those teachers tell themselves repeatedly, and it is this: fear. Those teachers are eventually afraid enough to let the clutch out on a serious shot at writing (even part-time, but protractedly), that they let a dissenting voice inside themselves stop a “live encounter” (again, Palmer, that amazing mentor of teachers) with the writer within. Such a meeting with the teacher as writer is daunting, because it invites transformation. We are feverish about the possible learning, about the creativity, about the products of our work. We are, though, as Albert Camus puts it, “porous.” What will happen? What will change?

Richard Wright was a teacher. He wrote when he could, among marking papers, preparing lessons, attending to the variegated and bulky duties of a secondary school English teacher. First came Andrew Tolliver. Then came lickety-split in writing time The Weekend Man, In the Middle of a Life, Farthing’s Fortunes, Final Things, The Teacher’s Daughter, Tourists, Sunset Manor, The Age of Longing. Year after year. He kept going. Not very much response or affirmation. Then came Clara Callan in 2001 and presto, the Giller Prize, the Governor-General’s Award, the Trillium Book Award.

Early on in his writing career, I invited Richard Wright to be a speaker at a conference presented by the Ontario Council of Teachers of English. Even though he had published a half dozen novels by that time, he was not well known. My colleague English teachers were reticent but polite about having him as a keynote speaker focused on the theme, “the teacher as writer.” It worked. They loved what he had to say about how his writing made him a better teacher. They loved that he stuck to it, despite all the pressures both internal and external, not to. 

In a panel discussion, part of the conference, he said that he had been writing all along with trepidation.
“What worried you?” I asked him on that panel.

“Spectres, lots of spectres,” he said. “Editors, readers, reviewers, my family.”

But the greatest fear of all, he told me, was “finding my own voice to write about significant things.”

There is a workshop afoot at Manitou Waters in Manitou Beach in July, all about finding such a voice in you. You, as teacher. It’s called, The Teacher As Writer. It will be about picking up tactics and techniques to get going with writing projects (the how’s, the why’s), and about your gearing up your inner health (physical, spiritual, professional) to let the clutch out.

The workshop will have eight people. We will convene in a space which is quiet, green, beautiful. You will eat food which is immensely nutritious. You will meet a famous Canadian writer, Jeanette Lynes, whose eighth book will be launched right during your workshop. You will meet other writers, too, from the STEEPED & BREWED WRITERS’ GROUP of Manitou Beach. You can swim (if you want to) in the amazing Little Manitou Lake. You can walk the splendid Manitou Beach Poetry Post Trail.

You will have time to write. You will encounter the “teacher who is writer,” who has been there all along; you. You will be introduced to a writing community whose members will stick with you on your “teacher as writer’s” path. As Gilbert Highet, another amazing teacher said, “A complete life needs to be replete with creativity.”

Everything’s included: food, bed, workshop materials, tutelage, music (in Louie’s Bistro and on Mercredi’s Stage (both part of Manitou Waters). Three packed days. Don’t be afraid. $750. (306) 917-7307 or davidjohnschleich@gmail.com to reserve your spot.

David Schleich, PhD, is the Past President of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild and President of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild Foundation. He is the former editor of Quarry Magazine/Quarry Press. He and his wife, Dr. Sussanna Czeranko, operate MANITOU WATERS, a naturopathic clinic and healing arts and education centre in Manitou Beach, SK. His most recent publications include The Terms of His Surrender (poetry) and The Amazing Adventures of the Gallumphing Gobbler (editor, children’s book) both by Crusoe House Press, Portland, Oregon. For more information, see the display ads on page 25 of the 31.1 May/June issue of the WHOLifE Journal.