…but there’s virtually nothing I wouldn’t like to try teaching. Except perhaps, hands-on sewage treatment. Maybe glassblowing also, given my notable lack of skill in that field. Okay, and fish processing.
Getting back to my point. Teaching is something I suspect I might be really good at, but never having tried, I can’t be sure. The lack of exertion on my part is probably due to my paralyzing fear of young children (youngsters being the core audience for most teaching).
My kinderfear was born of the preternatural speed with which little ones pick up knowledge. Their fresh little brains are like flypaper. Nothing is creepier that hyper-intelligent children. Go rent ‘Damien’ or watch ‘7th Heaven’ and tell me if you feel different after. Also, I abhor that any given 6-year-old at the local skating rink can zoom circles around me while I hobble along, clutching the boards for fear of slumping to the icy floor, Bambi-styles. They’re like little wool-covered hornets, or scary Oompaloompas with steel blades strapped to their feet. Ugh!
Now, adults… adults I can handle. Which is why I spent a silly amount of time last night agonizing over sending an email to the Toronto Women’s Bookstore, offering to teach a class on Women in Comics. I don’t know if they’re crazy enough to go for it, but I whiled away at least an hour speculating about lesson plans, and it was one of the best parts of my day.
Here is my lengthy testing-the-waters teaching proposal email to the TWB…
I was intrigued by your open-ended request for suggested class topics. My particular passion is graphic novels and comic books, with a focus on the history/current state of women working in the field. I’m well-versed in the subject, and have approached it with both an academic rigor learned from my Master’s degree in English Literature at UofT and a personal and professional interest gathered from working as a retailer and alternative/independent press specialist at the Silver Snail Comic Store on Queen Street.
There are a number of relevant books on this topic, some of which you might stock at your store. The two seminal publications in the field, from an academic standpoint, are ‘The Great Women Cartoonists’ and ‘The Great Women Superheroes’, both by Trina Robbins (published by Watson-Guptill). Beware! Don’t let the words “cartoon” and “superheroes” betray the richness of the genre – it’s not *all* about busty Amazons flying invisible planes.
Graphic literature has been expanding into challenging and exciting fields, including autobiography (‘Diary of a Teenage Girl’, Phoebe Gloeckner / ‘When I’m Old and Other Stories’, Gabrielle Bell), sexual/gender studies (‘Bitchy Bitch’, Roberta Gregory), non-fiction/sociology (‘Mother May I’, Sarrah Young and Willow Dawson’) and speculative fiction (‘Y: the Last Man’, Pia Guerra). In the field of Canadian studies, women have been leaving their mark on the international scene, as seen in the popularity of Quebecois artist Julie Doucet, whose many published works include her early ‘zine ‘Dirty Plotte’, later books ‘My New York Diary’, ‘Long Time Relationship’, and most recently her illustrations in Toronto’s hot new magazine, “The Walrus”.
By working in the industry and attending a number of trade shows, I’ve had the chance to meet, interview, and become friends with many women working in what has traditionally been (and continues to be) a male-dominated field. I see my involvement in the comics industry as an attempt to make women feel comfortable exploring the sometimes forbidding breadth and depth of this unsung, unreviewed material. Not completely unsung: I should hasten to mention the large internet communities of women artists and readers who have formed some of the best review websites around. ‘Sequential Tart’ (http://www.sequentialtart.com/home.shtml) and ‘Friends of Lulu’ (http://www.friends-lulu.org/) publish reviews and interviews, host message boards, and sponsor publications and anthologies of women’s work (‘Broad Appeal’).
I would love the opportunity to share my knowledge of this all-too-marginalized field with others, and I think my passion for the subject matter, familiarity with both guided discussion and lecture-based instruction, and connections within the comic community would make this a successful venture.
Any manager with an ounce of sense will snatch up your class idea. The class will be so highly in demand that you will have to beat people off with a stick and tell them to come back next week…. though if you beat them with a stick, they may decline to come back next week. Have you sent off the email yet?
-caellum
it’s an attractive and intriguing offer, little bunny, and i think they’d have to be utterly mad not to consider you. so send it off, length and all, and perhaps it’ll blossom into a career that doesn’t involve you being bored senseless for government money.
“Anything else is a waste of material”.
Do it. It’s silly to even consider otherwise. The worst thing they can do is say no (and by “worst thing” I mean for them).
Uh…yeah – you should totally do it!
The e-mail looks good – lengthy, yes, but I like it too….this may be the only chance you get to tell them about what you want to do, so it’s good that you’ve made it count.
Go for it, hon (and I promise that one of these days I’ll actually confirm my `cwf’ username so you actually know who I am when I leave these things….)!
C
I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t be fine. If your first go ends up being something like a simple seminar/presentation with questions from the group, it’ll be a walk in the park, the kind without dog poop or scary vagrants or cougars.
Thanks, caellum! Very nice of you to be so positive, even in the face of my utterly unjust rant about scary kids.
I know you teach (having vivid flashbacks of that happy family wearing plenty o’ latex protection, and my somewhat unsafe sex advice being rebroadcast to your students), but I don’t know what grade your class is. Would you classify your students as being at the Oompaloompa stage, or are they post-Oompaloompence?
Surely you mean older women looking for the companionship and loving affection of younger men, not the great pards of the mountain crags?
Thanks for your support! I think it would be fun, and although I know I’m by no means the best person to teach the course, at least I’m ready and willing.
Plus, anything my students ask on the first day that I don’t know the answer to, I will work myself to the bone researching so I can reply fully and with authority the next time.
These are 4 week/4 session evening classes, held on Monday and Tuesday nights, so it doesn’t conflict with either work schedule, which is handy.
On a more personal note, I’m SO sorry to hear about your subway incident, and also sorry that I won’t be able to partay with you tomorrow, as I’ll be workin’ at the Snail. 🙁
But I’ll post you an LJ birthday greeting, you bet!
Oooh, I can’t wait for you to get all LiveJournal official. After snaring Mia and Mehgan, I feel I’ve lost momentum with dragging everyone I know into the evil world of blogging.
Also? Did you catch the subtle George Michael “Faith” album reference in my subject line today? That’s all about hanging out with you and Amy!
You have to promise to proofread my lesson plans if I do this (there will only be 4, it shouldn’t be that painful). Not for content, just to make sure my enthusiasm doesn’t get the better of me, and I don’t try to teach them all the history of the cartoon universe in four hours.
Perhaps I will be popping into the Snail on my way to/from partaying, to treat myself to some Whedony Goodness.
When students ask something you don’t know, you can probably still at this early stage rely on “I’ll get back to you on that next week” (when there’s more than one session) or “Here are some good resources for you” – have a photocopied list of your favourite researchy thingos, probably most of what you boned up on prior to teaching the course (but not ALL your secrets of course). Later in your teaching career you will be experienced enough to go with the “Mwa mwa mwa mwa, mwa mwa mwa, mwa mwaaaa”, also known as the “Stack Of Steaming Poo” method. “Well you see my dear the pharyngial folds of the mwa mwa and anyway when I was at your age I was at the Met mwa mwa.” How I know it well.
it’ll blossom into a career that doesn’t involve you being bored senseless for government money.
Yep. Filthy lucre indeed. How well do I know that song?!
As if you think you have any choice in the matter.. This is your calling. I can’t imagine what breed of creature this may be who would be ‘more qualified’ that you for this task! GO GO GO and cover the world in ‘I [heart] Julie Doucet’ buttons!
barely related: pia is a bronzer. or used to be. we used to disagree on comics a lot.
They are all college age (and up to 45 yo), but some of them are still Oompa-Loompas, and will always be that way. But without the brains like fly paper. I like small woolen-covered hornets though, with brains like fly paper, though I prefer teaching at the University level. I don’t like wasting time on discipline, and teaching advaned concepts instead of memorization is appealing too. Also, I don’t really deal well with authority in regards to my teaching style, so a job at the public school level would probably soon see my ass fired.
-caellum
Did I catch the George Michael reference…pffffsssyah! (very hard to render that sound phonetically).
You know, it hurts me deeply that I’ve now become one of `those people’ who listen to George Michael and cause others to do so & quote him in their ‘blog…perhaps this is another watershed moment in my unexpectedly eventful 2004.
Of course I will help with your lesson plans – having dealt with a few of the woolen-fly-paper-hornets myself, I learned (the hard way) that lesson planning is highly worth it – maybe less crucial when you don’t have to worry about making sure that your students get the chance to get up & run around 15 times in an hour, but still helpful.
Maybe we could have MCAT-studying/lesson-planning nights – it’s all about the multi-tasking, baby. 🙂
C
Funny. Pia and I were both at the after-party for the Paradise ComicCon, where convention guests and volunteers got free gaming tokens. I almost had to beat her down for hogging the skee ball lanes. Which was kinda scary, ’cause she’s bigger than me.
But NOBODY gets between me and my skee ball addiction.
I feel bad that I missed out on the Bronze. Can I be an honorary Bronzer? Pleeeease??? I was an addicted Buffy fan from early on – Chrissy can vouch for me!
no, not allowed. trying to ride on our coat-tails to fame and fortune! pesky canadians.
Moira shall hereafter be know as “The Schrijfster”…I need to look that up, it doesn’t sound polite. See for details…. oh, I guess the schrijfster just means the author/writer, though Babel Fish translates it as “the More schrijfster”. It is clear that even Babel Fish acknowledges Moira as “the More Writer”, mo betta buttah writa, fersnizzel. gratuitous yo. peace out
-caellum