10.1

What kind of writing teacher do I want to be?

Superlative.
Am I done? I assume that's the answer that's lurking deep down under the layered obfuscations of "Ohahohoho but whatever do you mean?" I have taught writing classes—taught reading classes, even—and even now I don't actually identify myself as a writing teacher. Sure, I'm a writer (bad, of late, having produced nothing noteworthy or even likeable for the last year or more [or am I forgetting something? Have I put anything in the sidebar in that time?]). Sure, I'm a teacher (I show up in classrooms [which is a low bar to cross]). But I don't feel like a writing teacher. The grammarian in me screams at how I started the last sentence with a conjunction, and the optimist in me shrugs and whistles a merry tune and the dreamer in me allows that maybe I am a writing teacher after all, but none of these things make truth of the claim.
Competent.
Because what does it even mean to teach someone to write? Language is a function of such innumerable hours of difficult work (an aching, paining difficulty that no one quite notices because the rewards are often immediate and overwhelming. I think we have become inured to the difficulty of language and our expectations are so far benumbed that we forget that each (limp? querulous? gravid? disappointing?) tumble-down phrase we construct is the product of a thousand thousand tiny choices all piled up and leading to the one moment in which we speak, hear, read, think. I don't know what it takes to build proficiency in this activity other than to look deep into someone's helpless eyes and say more of the same.
Satisfied.
And deeply satisfied, I think, is a state of mind. I've been there, and I will be there again. I'm quite happy with who I am and how I teach, but satisfaction is a tacit remonstrance against the critical eye. One cannot coexist peacefully with the other. But if I am to be satisfied, and I hope to God I will be, where is the space for self-doubt? For questioning? For improvement? Perhaps, I fear, there is no space. I'll never improve. I'll never be competent. I'll never be superlative. But on the off chance, if I am very lucky and charmed beyond belief, I may well yet be satisfied.