Episode 21 drops live today with the second of my high school English teachers to visit the show. Today I get to sit down and kick back with Matt Cheney! Mr. Cheney and I shared an AP Literature classroom together during my senior year of high school. It was a year of intense growth for me as a writer and critical thinker. The texts I remember most fondly from that year included Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Checkhov’s The Cherry Orchard. I also recall an index card he had pinned to his wall that rea...
Episode 21 drops live today with the second of my high school English teachers to visit the show. Today I get to sit down and kick back with Matt Cheney! Mr. Cheney and I shared an AP Literature classroom together during my senior year of high school. It was a year of intense growth for me as a writer and critical thinker. The texts I remember most fondly from that year included Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Checkhov’s The Cherry Orchard. I also recall an index card he had pinned to his wall that read simply, in sharpie,
“My mother was a fish.” -Vardaman, As I Lay Dying
It took me a decade before I finally read these words within the context of Faulkner’s novel, but I think of that index card often because it piqued a sense of curiosity deep within me. I admired –and was deeply enamored by–the subtle hints and intellectual nudges scattered about in both Mr. Cheney’s classroom and his appreciation for the weirdness, the oddity, of what literature and writing can do…I guess, he showed a deep and queer awareness of the impossibly vast and bizarre element of our conscience that comes with being human.
In my classroom today, I have many hints, clues and books with secretly dog-eared pages and notecards with scribbled quotations scattered about. Sometimes students ask me about them…sometimes they go years without being noticed.
This conversation is a special one because Matt Cheney invited me to embrace myself as a non-conformist–an identity I fight to embrace daily.
He also taught me to sing and dance and make people laugh on stage. For all of this, I am grateful. Let’s go hang out with Mr. Cheney.
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Thanks again for tuning in. Here’s to connecting, reflecting, and staying hungry to learn.
Today’s episode has been brought to you by the book, Generous Thinking, in which the author, Kathleen Fitzpatrick asks whether universities can solve the social and political crisis in America. In answering the question, her publisher acknowledges that
"Higher education occupies a difficult place in twenty-first-century American culture. Universities—the institutions that bear so much responsibility for the future health of our nation—are at odds with the very publics they are intended to serve. As Kathleen Fitzpatrick asserts, it is imperative that we re-center the mission of the university to rebuild that lost trust. Critical thinking—the heart of what academics do—can today often negate, refuse, and reject new ideas.
In an age characterized by rampant anti-intellectualism, Fitzpatrick charges the academy with thinking constructively rather than competitively, building new ideas rather than tearing old ones down. She urges us to rethink how we teach the humanities and to refocus our attention on the very human ends—the desire for community and connection—that the humanities can best serve. One key aspect of that transformation involves fostering an atmosphere of what Fitzpatrick dubs "generous thinking," a mode of engagement that emphasizes listening over speaking, community over individualism, and collaboration over competition."
