A Day in the Life of James

by James Smith

And so it begins, another fresh start at the Summer Writing Institute! I am the ubiquitously named James Smith; a name conjured from only the most inclusive phone books of the world. I live in and work out of South Korea where I specialize in adult language learners.

Today, I had the good fortune of being among the first teaching exploration candidates -- together with my esteemed colleague Diomedes; a teaching exploration is interesting in the sense that you demonstrate your practice to your fellows and they spend a great deal of time breaking it down, getting to the essence of what you are hoping to impart to your students and why you have chosen that particular format. Meanwhile you, the teacher, watch the process unfold, take notes, and reflect on what is being said -- to some degree it feels like master engineers reverse-engineering some contraption you have put together and discovering themes and nuances that you never imagined even being there while at the same time forcing you to realize how you can improve and hone your skills as a teacher.

This was my second time through the process, the first being last year and I have to say, the process gets no less hair raising! But that's the point; to press you, to think, to challenge you. For my practice, I had my students for the day practice Japanese renga poetry. Think of a haiku, the 5/7/5 form that you may or may not remember and imagine a second person adding on to the poem with two extra 7/7 syllabic lines. Then, the original writer responds with yet another haiku and the process repeats. If you're interested in the practice itself, I wrote it up for everyone here! Naturally, should you have any questions, feel free to track me down on Facebook and ask me!

I can't wait to see what comes out of this summer -- I'd like to envision it, but the special thing about the Writing Institute is that the only thing you can predict is that it'll be awesome.

My Teaching Philosophy: Never stop growing; lessons exist within the experience -- the moment -- and everything else stems from this.