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I’m an old dawg. Shortly after I arrived at Lehigh in 1969, an after-dinner speaker heartened new faculty by describing the typical teacher career trajectory as moving from the jocose, through the bellicose, to the lachrymose, finally culminating ingloriously on the ash-heap of the comatose.
Well, speak for yourself, Mr. Burnt-Out, I’m an old dawg in a new job and feeling quite spry, thank you. I’m the second Lehigh Lab Faculty Fellow -- following His Honor, the FirstFellow, Jack Lule, better known by some as both poet and practioner extraordinaire of Little League Baseball.
The caption on the cute picture of me in the September LTS Connection (a far cry from the dreadful candid shot Editor Elia insisted on using here) says my job is to help faculty employ technology in teaching and research. Yep, yep, but (lean close) the real reason I took this position was to continue to learn more about employing technology in teaching and research.
Your version 2 Fellow sees himself in many ways as your standard model, traditional humanities teacher. I believe – echoing the Nahuatl meaning of the word – that a teacher is one who makes you put on a face. That is, a teacher is one who makes you step out, who makes you take on a unique identity, who makes you be an “I.”
Your version 2 Fellow even sheepishly admits to some intoxication at the charge to teachers in Emerson’s “Meek young men [tsk, he meant women too] grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men [harumph] in libraries when they wrote these books.”
So those are some of the goals I stand for. But as Pueblo Indian Betonie, mixing old and new in his medicine, reassures Tayo in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony: "The people nowadays have an idea about the ceremonies. They think the ceremonies must be performed exactly as they have always been done, maybe because one slip-up or mistake and the whole ceremony must be stopped. . . . But long ago when the people were given these ceremonies, the changing began. . . . You see, in many ways the ceremonies have always been changing."
Yes, the academic ceremonies, too, have always been changing. And, so, in the past half-dozen years I have been exploring new tools and methods, moving through Cindy Selfe's Computers in the Writing Intensive Classroom workshop at Michigan Tech, Randy Bass's American Studies Crossroads workshop at Georgetown, Tracey Weis's New Media Classroom workshop at Millersville, and into Bass’s Visible Knowledge Project at Georgetown.
The beat will continue in Lehigh Lab’s Technology Resource Learning Center.
Change can be scary. It can make you feel foolish. But one thing I've learned is that if you aren’t willing to play the fool, you’ll never learn anything truly new. There’s a bumper sticker for you: "if you aren’t willing to play the fool, you’ll never learn anything truly new."
Thinking about trying something new? Willing to don the motley for such a good cause? I'm just the fool for you: TRLC, FM Library, most MWF mornings, ext 82953.
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