The A to Z of How Much I Love Teaching!
The Letter A
Next to writing, I’m blessed with the gift for … teaching. I was doing both for as far back as I can remember, thanks to my Grandma Hill who nurtured my interests as early as 4 years old. First learning from Kermit the Frog on Sesame Street how to draw the letter “A” with my Grandma as my guide, she taught me how to read and write with such daily, loving instruction on the little veranda of my paternal grandparents’ Calgary, Alberta home. What a beautiful “school” and teachers I had! I still have the marker I used to pen that “A,” sending frissons through me as I recall it as fresh as yesterday.
Playing School
My makeshift classrooms would evolve into taking up prime real estate in the basement or bedrooms of every home I lived in when the folks divorced, and mom moved to Ottawa in 1979. No more Grandma Hill around, so I began instructing my dolls and imaginary pupils as she did with me. Oh, they sat studiously so on lawnchairs at TV-table desks, arranged perfectly in view of blackboards, a DIY library, and art supplies. Soon after my step-brothers would indulge me for a few years, “playing school.”
Really Teaching!
Things got real when I started tutoring in high school. A great opportunity to start helping students in need, which then took the shape of: being a Teaching Assistant during graduate school (Carleton University 1999, English Literature and Language); teaching a few classes for profs who needed a back-fill; and, designing a week-long Enrichment Mini-Course at Carleton for high school students. Following that, my first professional jobs were as a part-time Writer/Editor for the Government of Canada and freelance, alongside a sessional job asProfessor of English at Algonquin College in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada).
University Centres of Continuing Education
The dream really came true in 2013 when the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Continuing Education took me on to create and teach some edgy literature courses. An inspiring and supportive team of professionals there nurtured the development of my popular and sold-out courses on James Joyce’s Ulysses, and female sexuality and awakenings through the literary exploration of unsatisfied wives. Carleton University and University College Cork in Ireland would later accept my pitches and offerings for the Joyce course. And Bloomsday Montreal in 2016 hosted me at McGill University’s Centre for Lifelong Learning to bring my James Joyce workshop to avid and new fans of Joyce’s book, Ulysses.
And Now…?
A pandemic, perimenopause, migrating to Montreal, Quebec (Canada) and a busy day job got in the way of my returning to teach Joyce and other teaching.
Nearly a decade later from the first time teaching people how to read Ulysses, in 2023 walking a jungle path in Iquitos, Peru one early morning, there was a voice inside my head that said, “You have to get back to teaching!” Or perchance it was Grandmother who was talking to me …? ♥
Are you part of a fun literary circle, book club or group, inviting enthusiastic shares about edgy literature, banned books and James Joyce?