Update on "This Is Why We Teach"

I'm writing an update to a note I wrote some time ago on Facebook about a former student. Here is the note:

A freshman girl came into my office today highly upset over her failing grade in my class from the previous spring semester. She vehemently criticized my teaching practices, my grading process, and my credentials. However, as she berated me while I just sat there and swallowed that harsh pill, her eyes began to fill with tears spilling down her heated face.

I explained my syllabus and class procedures to her, but she remained inconsolable. She finally listened to reason when I inquired about the classes she was taking for the summer. She replied that she was doing better in those courses than the spring courses. I posed the question to her that brought her to the gate of epiphany.

"What are you doing in these new classes that you had not done in my class last semester?"

She explained that she studied more and had a better attitude about school. She neglected her friends' requests to pledge or go out to clubs. Finally, she realized that I was not her enemy and that I was trying to prepare her for a cruel world who seeks only the best and brightest for its endeavors. Sometimes the best teacher is harsh reality.

She said to me that she learned a lesson from the failing grade and (I like this part) that she was "woman enough" to confront me about the situation and to work on herself in the process. I told her that students who spend four years or more in college (including myself) don't learn that lesson until it is too late.


This student is a junior now. Yes, she did pledge and was accepted into a sorority. However, she is also on the Dean's List. Days after I saw her name on Dean's List board on campus, guess who walked into my office to give an update?

She did not come to rub her success in my face, but she said, "I came to check up on you, Mr. Lawson, and to say thank you for kickin' my butt in English two years ago. I needed it."

If you are a teacher, then don't give up on your high expectations for your students. You should not have to lower the bar for them. That would be easy. No! They should rise up to the bar you set.

I am blessed and fulfilled by this student's story and more like her. I'm not waiting for my destiny to be fulfilled, but I am walking it out each day that I submit myself to serve God and people.

Statement of Purpose

I recently wrote a Statement of Purpose for a graduate school application. Instantly, I reflected on the past five to six years of my life and my path to my overall purpose in life. It extends far beyond graduate school. I realize that people are unfamiliar with my career path, so I have included excerpts from the statement.

I am originally from Bamberg, SC, which is an hour away from Columbia and closest to Orangeburg, where I attended Bamberg-Ehrhardt High School. It was there in my AP English course that we read the works of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Shakespeare, and other iconic literary writers. Mrs. Lisa Deibel, my English teacher, always told me that my writing was superior and that I should pursue it as a career. I also enrolled in her Teacher Cadets course where I first learned about pedagogy, psychological theorists such as Piaget and Maslow, and valuable classroom instructional strategies. Mrs. Deibel later told me that I should also pursue a career in education. However, I neglected her counsel and pursued an undergraduate degree in business administration and management at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC. After graduating there and after five years in the business field, I realized that it was not my passion; I discovered that Mrs. Deibel was right. In college, I should have pursued my true passion which is writing and teaching...

Upon leaving the business world, I received a master’s degree in English from National University near San Diego, CA. My coursework included literary criticism, the Romantic and Victorian periods, and major authors such as Walt Whitman and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wrote my graduate thesis entitled The Blackness of Darkness: Africanism and the Africanist Presence in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which is based on Toni Morrison’s derivative of African American literary criticism. After graduating, I received my first teaching position at Hampton School District 2 in middle level English/Language Arts. Three years later I accepted a position as a full-time instructor teaching developmental English, freshman composition, and literature courses at Morris College in Sumter, SC, where I am in the third year of my tenure. In 2012, I was awarded the Advisor of the Year Award at Morris...

During my years in education, I have also developed as a writer. In 2013, Claflin University in Orangeburg will publish a pedagogical essay I wrote entitled Back to the Future: Approaches to Best Practices in Reflective Teaching. I also have compiled a collection of poetry that I will publish this year entitled The Very Least of Me, and I am completing a fiction novel entitled City of David that I would like to publish this year as well. Moreover, I am a member of the South Carolina Writers Workshop and have attended its annual conference in Myrtle Beach. The group meets semi-monthly to read and critique each members’ writing samples of various genres, including poetry and fiction...

I ended the statement with this...Preparation remains the key to success in any journey toward purpose, and I will pursue [it] diligently because it is the beginning of my life’s work.

Our Friendship That Never Was

Dean Rockwell worked in the graphics/printing department at Morris College where I also teach. When I first met Dean, I thought he was a curmudgeon who was bitter about his job and his home life. He scoffed at the first print job I gave him. However, over time I realized that he was far from cantankerous. He liked motorcycles and had pictures of them that he drew on the walls of his office He also displayed scupltures of spaceships from the Star Wars movies.

As we grew to know one another, I found out that he had a passion for rescuing stray pets and keeping them in his own home. By his last count, he had some 30-40 pets living with he and his wife. Almost everytime I visited Graphics, he had another story about the latest pet to join his menagerie.

One day our conversations turned to golf. We were both just getting back into the game and discussed clubs, local greens, and exaggerated golf scores we'd shot. We all but made plans to play together. For some reason, we never did.

One evening my fiancee and I saw Dean and his wife at a restaurant where one of my colleagues played music and sang. He was supportive of that colleague and of me. He made accomodations for my print jobs when I brought them to him at the last minute. I know he probably didn't want to do it, but he did just the same.

The last time I saw Dean he looked very sick and was suffering from an illness that I didn't even know he had. His wife held his hand that day as I helped him into his pick-up truck. I told him I'd pray for he and his family. The following week someone in our building told me Dean had passed away.

I yelled, "No!" out loud and held my head in my hands. I was upset because I didn't get to golf with him. We didn't get to enjoy any conversations together outside of work. I found out from Dean's co-worker in Graphics that he enjoyed hearing about the Bible and that her cousin would pray with him at work from time to time. Regretfully, our conversations never turned to God.

Now Dean is at rest, but my soul is vexed. In all my encounters with Dean, I had forgotten that God sends people into our lives as "salt" and "light" to them. More importantly, God sends us has "salt" and "light" to other people! We are in the lives of others to show them a more excellent way that leads to Christ, or that is why people who annoy us with their Bible-thumping and Scripture-quoting are sent into our lives. If the words are not placed in our mouths to offer people, the least we can do is to exhibit a life that is pleasing to God before them.

I'm thankful that I knew Dean. Ours could have been a blessed friendship had I truly gotten to know him more. It was a missed opportunity for both of us: a friendship that never was.

A Holiday Tale

On the Sunday night before Christmas and all through the long highway from my hometown Bamberg, SC, to my home in Columbia, SC, not a creature was stirring, not even my black SUV that had suffered many repairs in 2012 already. As I drove down the lonely highway, the headlights suddenly grew dim along with the interior lights. I attempted to adjust the lights while the car began to slow down involuntarily. Entering Orangeburg, SC, I pulled into a nearby parking lot and turned off the engine, but it would not restart. Thinking it was the battery, I called my stepfather to help me give the battery a boost.

After a few moments and against his judgment that it may be the alternator, I got back on the road to make the near one hour trip I had left to make it home. I felt confident that the battery would hold. When I had reached I-77, the car began to stall again--in the middle of nowhere! However, as it turned two hours to midnight, I made up my mind that I would not be stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Sheer determination powered the vehicle back into the Columbia town limits. As I extended my gratitude toward the heavens, the hapless car began stalling again, but this time no prayer could save her. The lights dimmed, and the engine slowed down. The car stopped on the shoulder of a bridge headed north on the interstate.  The temperature was 35 degrees. It was one hour until midnight, and this time there was no one to call because my cell had died.

If anyone is looking for a happy ending here, then they won't find it here. Over two bridges and with a herd of oncoming traffic behind me, I walked two miles to the nearest exit. I didn't expect anyone to stop and offer me assistance at that hour. My emergency lights could not come on, and days after the Newtown tragedy, everyone's conscience was surely on high alert, especially during the holiday season. After I charged my phone at a nearby convenience store, I called my wife to give me a ride home.

Thinking back to the long walk on the interstate, I was not angry. Incredibly, I have suffered worse things in my life. Many thoughts carried me along during the endless trek. I'm grateful to still be alive and not have suffered a worse fate. At any point during that ordeal, I could have been taken out of this world, yet I remain here today for an awesome, unbelievable purpose. The "fun" in the situation is understanding why did it happen--not just logistically but spiritually. I do not believe in fate; I believe in destiny and purpose through God.

Somewhere and someday that experience will be used to help both myself and someone else. Stay tuned for that update (it may even be in years to come...)

Zora & Me

I had the great privilege to visit a national landmark this past week while on our honeymoon. We were in Kissimmee, FL, and traveled twenty minutes north to the small town of Eatonville (just north of Orlando) to visit the Zora Neal Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts.

I have been a fan of Hurston since high school when in English class we read her most famous novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. It may sound cliche, but this novel might have just changed my life. Aside from seeing black characters not simply as props, her writing depicts authentic characters and African American dialect that I grew up around my entire life living in South Carolina.

It was not until my wife and I visited the museum that I realized how much of an influence Hurston has on my writing. Honestly, I had not read the Their Eyes for 15 years, but apparently some part of me retained Hurston's allegorical writing style and her use of Southern vernacular. I did not pattern my writing after Hurston, but the dialogue and use of symbols and rural imagery clearly suggests her as one of my writing influences.


More intensely, I can see that Hurston's themes and motifs abide comfortably in the bosom of my writing. Once I became enlightened by the rest of her works at the museum, I realized that both she and I use allegory in our writing. Her novel Moses, Man of the Mountain is based on the Biblical story of Moses. Speaking of which, Hurston also used Biblical motifs unsparingly in her characters and her themes. In her first novel Jonah's Gourd Vine, the main character John Pearson becomes a preacher who struggles with the lusts of the flesh. In my upcoming novel City of David (which allegorically can be related to the Biblical giant slayer and king of Israel) the main character David Johns reaps the consequences from similar temptations as John Pearson.



Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston's autobiography

Finally, Hurston is a master at infusing her novels with autobiographical text. She illustrates the town of Eatonville, where she lived as a young girl, in several of her works, including Their Eyes Were Watching God in which she draws from a past relationship to manifest the compelling love affair of Janie and Tea Cake. She also depicts the relationship between her father and mother in Jonah's Gourd Vine. Similarly, my novel City of David exhibits elements of my experiences in college and marriage.

I was completely floored and humbly inspired when I realized these similarities existed between my writing and that of Zora Neale Hurston. She has influenced the great writers of our time such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Ralph Ellison. Countless other authors will testify to Hurston influencing their works. I could be discouraged that someone else has already written in the style that I am attempting to now. Nonetheless, I remain encouraged that someone has already gone before me and has successfully laid a marvelous blueprint for the literary fiction I am trying to write. I can now learn from her victories and her setbacks in order to make my career as a writer a fulfilling one. I am grateful and eager to learn all I can from Hurston's life and writing. It is a wonderful thing to belong to a family tree whose branches somewhere from the roots connect Zora to me.

Update for 2013

I'm uploading this web video as an update on the publications I have in the works for the new year! Just click either of the links below to view it. Enjoy this season of giving, and anticipate a glorious 2013.

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Are You a Worrier or a WARRIOR?

This question was dropped in my spirit last night as I lay in bed. As a writer, there are tons of things to worry about and consider on the road to publication and eventual "success" (a relative term at best). The myriad of questions for writers leads down a treacherous path of worry, stress, and even depression which all lead to apathy, inactivity, and the destruction of our dreams. The ultimate goal of worry is to destroy our faith--not just spiritual faith, but faith in ourselves or our own visions and goals. Some of those dream-killing questions include:

• How do I know if my work is any good?
• Why am I not seeing results in my writing like others?
• How can I market my writing when no one is interested in it or me?
• When is it time to quit on my dreams?

Any worrier can attest to the fact that worry leads to more worry. It doesn't stop unless we draw the line and make it stop! The solution is just moving forward. We can reach a destination if we are always stopping at rest spots along the way. We have to keep moving!

I submit to you these bullet points from motivational speaker Craig Harper about worriers and warriors.

Worriers:

• Find things to stress about
• Are generally reactive (not proactive)
• Over-think the shit out of everything
• Are people-pleasers (and not in a good way)
• Avoid the things they should address
• Allow fear to run their lives
• Don’t stand up for themselves
• Hope things will (magically) work out
• Love routine, predictability and familiarity
• Beat themselves up often
• Procrastinate
• Apologize unnecessarily
• Waste emotional energy on stuff they can’t change
• Waste time, talent and opportunities
• Are exhausting to be around

Warriors:

• Take chances
• Are prepared to get uncomfortable
• Make the tough decisions
• Persevere when most would give up
• Ask the hard questions
• Don’t look for permission, sympathy or approval
• Explore and exploit their potential
• Finish what they start
• Talk less and do more
• Are solution-focused not problem-obsessed
• Acknowledge their flaws without any hint of self-loathing
• Don’t shirk responsibility
• Are inspiring to be around
• Are adaptable and cope well with change
• Fight for what they believe in

(craigharper.com)

The only way to overcome the plague of worry is to cut it off, to slice it out of our minds, to burn it up from our psyche, to kill it--like a warrior would do. Whatever your worries are (and mine), let's agree to fight them today until the bitter end.

Whenever I think of warriors, I think of these two men: the iconic wrestler the Ultimate Warrior and the epic King Leonidas from the movie 300. These men personify the warrior spirit although they are fictional. Whoever is a warrior to you, I challenge you to get their picture in your mind when worry creeps upon you. What would they do? They would fight!

Therefore, I give a war cry to all my writers. Despite the many tough questions, obstacles, and shortcomings in this industry, don't throw in the towel. Embrace the warrior spirit and WRITE, WRITE, WRITE!