The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious,
and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. –T S Eliot
Recently, I planned out my courses for spring. I wrote new syllabi for poetry and fiction workshops and revised my existing syllabi, too. And, this year I decided to include a new section. After explaining to my students the Grades and Attendance and Formatting Your Work parts of my syllabus, I added a section called Creating Sacred Space.
This is new territory for me, and will be for most of my students, I think, and I’m curious to know what you think.
What I have noticed in the past couple of years is this. Students rarely take phone calls during class. Most of the time, they silence their phones, though a few times each semester (usually during an in class writing period, or when a student is reading an incredibly moving, incredibly personal poem aloud—aka The Worst Time), a phone will hum and buzz and there will be a frenzied patting down of a backpack or self, a litany of apologies, or, worst, weird silent ignoring while the buzzing or belling persists. Once in a great while a student will take a call in class: “I have to take this! It’s my mom!”
Ugh.
But last year, I noticed something truly deleterious, in my opinion, to the workshop itself. When we take our break halfway through the three hour workshop, many students get out their phones and text. Some of them text during the entire break. Often, I’ll see the little thumbs, the downward gaze, when we are in class, not on the break. Texting in class is okay, students believe, in a way that taking an actual phone call is not. But, I think it’s very much NOT okay. So, this semester, I’m creating a new policy: Sacred Space. Continue reading “It’s on the Syllabus: Creating Sacred Space”