Teaching as a Human Experience: An Anthology of Contemporary Poems
The poems in this collection deal with the real life-worlds of professors, instructors, lecturers, teachers, and others working in education. This volume covers contemporary teaching experiences in education, including the many roles that teachers play such as instructing, lecturing, mentoring, facilitating, coaching, guiding, and leading. This volume covers the manifold life experiences and perspectives of being and working as a teacher in education and the epiphanies experienced in that role. This volume gives creative voice to the full range of experiences by teachers, students, and others, and empowers readers with inspiration and personal agency as they evolve as self-creating, self-determining authors of their own lives, both personally and professionally. The poems in this volume are largely based on teachers’ meaningful experiences in and out of the classroom, and will provide artistic inspiration and creative insight to others who currently work as teachers or those students who are preparing to be professors, instructors, and teachers or those students who simply enjoy the creative voice of others.
This book is part of a series. View the full series, "Contemporary Teaching and Learning Poetry", here.
Karen J. Head is Director of the Communication Center at Georgia Institute of Technology, and an Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. Her research areas focus on writing and communication theory and pedagogical practice, especially regarding the implementation and development of writing centers, writing program administration, communication ecologies, technical and business communication, multidisciplinary communication, and creative writing. In 2012–13, she was part of the GT team awarded a Gates Foundation Grant to develop one of the first Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) focused on college writing, and she has published about the experience.
Patrick Blessinger is the founder and Executive Director of the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) and Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Education at St. John’s University. He has held various positions in academia in both the US and in Europe. He is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences, and has published a number of books and articles. He is a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Denmark and Governor’s Teaching Fellow for the State of Georgia, USA. He is the editor-in-chief of two academic journals and two book series on teaching.
“To read Teaching as a Human Experience is to fall in love with poetry yet again and to inhabit an uneasy, savory space filled with teachers and students, novices, peers, and professionals that enacts the protean learning struggle. [It is] highly recommended.”
—Gina Rae Foster, author of heart speech this (Atropos Press, 2009) and Beautiful Laceration (2012)
“With poems as diverse as the educators who composed them this extraordinary anthology transcends the ancient Greek term for poetry—‘poioe’, meaning ‘I create’. The wider interpretation suggests an art form in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to its semantic content. How apt for a collection that serves to celebrate the idea that teaching is in essence a poetic act.”
—Lorraine Stefani, Professor of Higher Education Strategic Engage-ment, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland
“The relationship between teaching and poetry is nothing less than an experiential demonstration—for students, other teachers and education managers —of how to cultivate the inner disciplines of the imagination and the educated heart. The poems in this wonderful anthology show us the ethical values of pedagogy in the process of being created.”
—Lesley Saunders, Visiting Professor, UCL Institute of Education and Newman University, England
Peter Meinke
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